Hanam Korean BBQ restaurant with outdoor charcoal grills: Ikkjujeokku

It is at 1F, 5 Gwangam-ro 148beon-gil, Hanam-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, with parking available and both indoor and outdoor dining. Hours are 17:00 to 22:00, with last orders at 21:00.

A different kind of Korean BBQ atmosphere in Hanam’s outskirts

This weekend, I was looking for somewhere to eat meat around Hanam and visited Ikkjujeokku (이것도 꾸워먹고 저것도 꾸워먹고) because even its name was so unusual. At first, I wondered what kind of restaurant it could be just from hearing the name, but once I went, it had a different atmosphere from an ordinary Korean BBQ place! It is especially worth remembering if you want meat in a distinctive setting among the restaurants around Gamil, Hanam, because it sits close to the mountains in a quiet suburban spot.

What impressed me most here was definitely the atmosphere. You can eat comfortably inside like at a regular Korean BBQ restaurant, or grill the meat yourself over charcoal outside! Eating outdoors feels like coming to a campsite for a meat barbecue, so I think it would be fun to visit with children and eat outside on a nice day. I used an indoor table comfortably that day!! The inside was cleaner than I expected, the tables were not cramped together, and because it is a suburban restaurant, the area was not crowded and the parking was fairly spacious, making it easy to visit by car.

How ordering and the self-service bar work

There is a guide on the table to refer to, and you can bring side dishes from the self-service bar! You do pretty much everything yourself here.

You order on the tablet at your seat, and I ordered 400 g of Jeju white-pig fresh ogyeopsal, along with steamed egg and kimchi stew. Even though it is Jeju white-pig ogyeopsal, ₩5,900 for 100 g is about one-third of what you would pay at a typical restaurant, so it seems like really good value!

The owner brought over four sauces—ssamjang (seasoned soybean paste), galchi sokjeot (fermented hairtail fish sauce), Himalayan salt, and wasabi—and I picked up the rest of the side dishes from the self-service bar!

Thick-cut Jeju white-pig fresh ogyeopsal

My 400 g order of white-pig fresh ogyeopsal arrived, and the meat was thick—you could tell at a glance that it had a good thickness, so I thought it would stay juicy when grilled! They also served bean sprouts and bracken fern as sides, haha.

I put the pieces on the grill one by one and cooked them until nicely browned! The ogyeopsal was savory and browned on the outside, moist inside, and just fatty enough that it was not dry; the more I chewed, the more savory juices I could taste. Since it was such thick meat, cutting it into generous pieces rather than tiny ones gave it a better texture.

It was good lightly dipped in salt, and it also went well with ssamjang or the other sauces! Rather than grilling only the ogyeopsal, I put greens and kimchi on the stone plate to grill alongside it, and they paired wonderfully with the meat.

The fat from the ogyeopsal soaked into the greens and kimchi, making them much more savory and rich than when eaten as they are. Well-cooked green-onion kimchi is, needless to say, a perfect match for pork belly! Putting grilled kimchi and greens on a piece of ogyeopsal balanced the meat’s richness, making for a really abundant meal.

Alternating among the different greens kept it from becoming boring, and if you are looking for pork belly at a Hanam meat restaurant, this different approach seems much more fun than a place that simply grills meat!

Fluffy steamed egg and rich kimchi stew

Steamed egg is a menu item you cannot leave out when eating pork, right? The steamed egg was fluffy and soft!! A spoonful while it was hot melted gently in my mouth, and it was nice to have between bites of pork. When you go to a Korean BBQ restaurant with children, it can often be hard to decide what to feed them, but having one steamed egg makes things much easier. With pork belly, greens, kimchi, and steamed egg, the meal felt plentiful.

And the dish I really enjoyed that day was the kimchi stew. I ordered it without expecting much from a Korean BBQ restaurant’s kimchi stew, but it was tastier than expected and the broth was quite rich! It was not a light stew that tasted only of kimchi; it felt as though it had simmered long enough for the flavors of the meat and kimchi to fully infuse the broth.

The kimchi was thoroughly softened, there was a generous amount of meat inside, and there were enough solid ingredients that it was fun to fish out the meat! Each spoonful combined the tart, pleasantly spicy flavor of kimchi with the depth from the meat, so it was a perfect match for rice. The hot kimchi stew also completely cut through the richness of the ogyeopsal.

A place I want to revisit for the outdoor charcoal tables

At Ikkjujeokku, it was nice to eat meat comfortably indoors this time, but grilling it over charcoal outside on a good-weather day would create a completely different atmosphere! Going far away for a camping trip can feel like a lot, so I liked being able to eat meat with a camping feeling in the suburbs and enjoy the relaxed atmosphere. The pork belly was thick-cut, the greens and kimchi were grilled on a stone plate, and even the rich kimchi stew packed with ingredients was satisfying. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good meat restaurant around Gamil or Gamildong in Hanam, or to those who want to eat pork belly in a more special setting than an ordinary Korean BBQ place. Next time, I would love to properly grill some meat over charcoal at an outdoor table on a nice day. :)