Gwangju Korean BBQ with aged pork: Gogup Yeonguso

This time, I visited Gogup Yeonguso (고굽연구소) in Gyeongan-dong, Gwangju, Gyeonggi! 📝

They serve aged meat that goes through 💧a first water-aging stage followed by 🥩a second dry-aging stage, then is fire-seared and smoked. I was already really looking forward to the meat from the start!

Parking and restaurant atmosphere

There is 🚘parking out front, with room for about three cars.

It was convenient because we could park and walk straight in! 📍If you use navigation, go into the alley beside the Jin Beauty Supplies building.

The interior was much more spacious than it looked from outside! With its black-and-wood decor, it felt a little more atmospheric than a typical Korean barbecue restaurant.

That makes it a nice option for a date in Gyeonggi Gwangju, a family meal, or a work gathering 👍 And the first thing that caught my eye as soon as I walked in was this!

The aging room you can see inside

💧First water-aging ➡️ then second dry-aging. There is an aging room inside, so you can actually see the meat being aged. Rather than simply reading about it on a menu, seeing the meat aging right there made me think, wow, they really do take aged meat seriously here. ✅️After the two ✌️aging stages, they fire-sear it 🔥 and smoke it too. My anticipation was rising for no reason before the meat even arrived haha.

📺 On one side, there was also a large display photo from its feature on KBS's 6 O'Clock Hometown.

What two adults ordered

There were two of us, and we ordered 1️⃣ 500g of aged pork collar (gabrisal), and 2️⃣ soft tofu doenjang-jjigae (soybean-paste stew)!

The 500g portion of aged 🥩pork collar is for two to three people, so it was plenty for two adults. To give you the conclusion first: we were absolutely stuffed 😊

House-made side dishes and three sauces

At a meat restaurant, I quietly pay a lot of attention to 🥬the side dishes and 🧂sauces. Gogup Yeonguso even explains the side dishes it serves on the menu.

They make everything themselves, from lettuce and assorted pickles to the side dishes and sauces, which made me trust it even more. But my favorite thing here was the set of three sauces! 👀

There was a gochujang-soy dipping sauce, salt + wasabi, and a Southeast Asian-style dipping sauce. Of those, ✅️the gochujang-soy dipping sauce on the far left was the most to my taste!

✅️My husband liked the Southeast Asian-style dipping sauce, as well as a little wasabi on 🧂salt.

It was nice that changing the sauce made the same meat feel different each time.

Pre-seared meat arrives through the smoke

When the meat came out, they put on a fun 🎉little performance. The 🥩meat appeared in a cloud of smoke, so it looked appetizing from the very start 👍

Most of all, 🔥it comes pre-seared! The outside was already partly cooked, so all we had to do at the table was cook it through.

The owner also personally showed us ➡️which direction to cut the meat. The owner was so kind that 🤍 even as first-time visitors, we could eat comfortably 😊

Tender, juicy aged pork collar

We cut the cooked 🍖meat into easy-to-eat pieces, then grilled the mushrooms, eggplant, asparagus, and onion that came with it right beside the meat on the 🔥grill~~

It was really tender 👍 Even though the pieces were thick, they were tender and juicy, without that distinctive dry toughness pork 🐖 can have! 💧Maybe because it had been aged, the flavor of the meat itself came through richly too.

It was delicious with a little wasabi on salt, delicious dipped in the gochujang-soy sauce, and of course delicious wrapped in lettuce with a piece of meat, onion, and sauce—meat really is best as a ssam (lettuce wrap) 🥬

A generous soft tofu doenjang-jjigae that hardly feels like dessert

And finally, 🍲a dessert-menu item! We ordered the soft tofu doenjang-jjigae.

It is called a dessert, but the portion was not dessert-like at all hahaha. It came generously filled in a ttukbaegi (earthenware pot), with not just soft tofu but bean sprouts and 🥓beef brisket too! After 🥩meat, a spoonful of rice with doenjang-jjigae was such a great combination ❤️ If you are someone who feels a meal is not complete until you have properly had rice after meat, I would recommend this menu item 👍

Other dessert-menu dishes and makchang

The menu also had, besides soft tofu doenjang-jjigae, dishes such as aglio e olio, tom yum kung drinking soup, beef belly with bean sprouts, and beef belly ramen.

There were quite a few options that were a little different from the dessert-menu dishes you commonly see at meat restaurants. They also sell makchang (pork large intestine)!

While we were eating, another table was having 🍖makchang. It smelled great and looked delicious, so I would like to try the makchang next time too 😆

Gogup Yeonguso (고굽연구소), which I visited this time, felt like more than a place where you simply grill meat: 💧water-aging, 🥩dry-aging, 🔥fire-searing & smoking—the whole process for making the meat delicious seemed carefully planned! Is that why it is called a research institute? 💡 More than anything, being able to see the aging room yourself builds anticipation before you even eat 🥰 If you are looking for a good restaurant in Gyeonggi Gwangju or Gyeongan-dong and love aged meat, this seems like a place worth trying at least once! Next time, I want to try the makchang we missed this time too 🥩✨