Jonggak Korean BBQ with a coworker, garlic sauce refills: Yukrab

I was looking for a BBQ place near my office with a nice atmosphere and found Yukrab Jongno (육랩 종로점) in the youth street near Jonggak Station and Jongno 3-ga. So I went!!

Where is Yukrab Jongno and what are its hours?

Yukrab Jongno is on the 3rd floor at 42 Ujeongguk-ro 2-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, a 5-minute walk from Jonggak Station Exit 4. It's open 16:00-23:00 with last order at 22:00. You can reserve through Naver, and they say there's an event for reservations too.

It's in the Jonggak youth street, but it's on the 3rd floor, so look at the building carefully!

What's the vibe for dates and company dinners?

Yukrab Jongno has lots of private rooms, so the mood is great for a date, and it seems perfect for a Jonggak company dinner too! I went with a senior coworker, and the next table was a group of office workers having a company dinner. It's a room, though, so it wasn't noisy at all haha. The atmosphere was so good that I now want to come back with my husband.

Yukrab set for 2: contents and price

Yukrab Jongno's 2-person Yukrab set comes with 120g of jingalbisal (prime galbi meat), 230g of lamb chops, 120g of toshisal (beef skirt), 3 pieces of cheese and doenjang jjigae (soybean paste stew) for ₩67,000. Extra rice is ₩1,500.

Yukrab specializes in beef, so there's jingalbisal, sirloin, toshisal, garlic beef ribs, two-plus Hanwoo tenderloin and more, but they sell lamb too! The set combinations are so good that I ordered the 2-person Yukrab set instead of single items.

• 2-person Yukrab set: jingalbisal 120g + lamb chops 230g + toshisal 120g + 3 pcs cheese + doenjang jjigae / ₩67,000
• Extra rice +₩1,500

Besides the 2-person Yukrab set I ordered, the 2-person galbi set and 3-person mixed set look good too, and the drinks aren't just soju and beer: there were whiskey, highballs and wine as well haha

Yukrab Jongno review event discount

The review event at Yukrab Jongno was really good. Depending on group size, a party of 4 can get up to ₩10,000 off, and for a group of 16, they say even 4 people joining gets you ₩40,000 off. No reason not to take part!!!

What sides and sauces come at Yukrab Jongno?

The basic table setting at Yukrab Jongno is generous: 4 sauces and 6 side dishes. For beef there's wasabi, whole-grain mustard, garlic sauce and ssamjang (seasoned soybean paste), plus sauces like cumin (jjeuran) for the lamb chops, and the 6 sides were kimchi, pickled lettuce, salad, pickled garlic and 2 kinds of namul (seasoned vegetables)! And the sides are all delicious, and so are the sauces ㅠㅠ The sides pass already!!

The Yukrab set I ordered! The plating alone makes you reach for your camera. You know the vegetables and rice cakes that come with it are the best when grilled alongside the meat.

Doesn't the color of the meat look different? The marbling is so good ㅠㅠ

The 2-person Yukrab set has 470g of meat in total, which is plenty for two! We're two women and we both nearly burst,,

A staff member explained each cut and said to grill them in the order jingalbisal, toshisal, lamb chops, and then you can just grill comfortably!!

You can't have meat without doenjang jjigae.

Why I even praised the rice

Koreans run on rice (밥심)! I ordered just one extra bowl, and no exaggeration, the rice was so sticky and delicious that my senior and I guessed it must be good rice and kept praising it even after leaving the restaurant lol I was so curious where the rice comes from•••

The marbling is insane

How do you grill the jingalbisal, and how does it taste?

In the Yukrab set you grill the jingalbisal first. Unlike pork, beef doesn't have to be cooked through; you can have it rare, medium or well-done to taste. I think we grilled it to about medium-well haha Cooked on the outside, a little less inside!

I put all the sauces on my plate and tried each one, and Yukrab's garlic sauce is sweet without the bitter edge of garlic, so good that I asked for more haha

Once the meat was cooked a bit, I laid it on top of the vegetables and rice cakes lol Honestly I'm very picky about the gamey smell particular to beef, but Yukrab's jingalbisal had really no gamey smell and was full of juice, so so delicious! The meat itself seems so good that I think it'd be tender even grilled well-done, with no dryness at all.

Is the toshisal at Yukrab Jongno tender?

Toshisal comes after the jingalbisal! I normally like the more tender buchaesal (oyster blade) better than toshisal, but Yukrab is a toshisal spot. The texture was so tender I wondered whether toshisal could really be this soft, and every bite was full of rich beef flavor.

Lamb chops and grilled cheese

Last, we grilled the lamb chops. (But the earlier meat was so good and plentiful that I was already more than half full,,)

They said the cheese in the set falls through the grill if you put it directly on the brazier, so we grilled it on top of the vegetables lol

Grill the lamb chops golden on top and bottom, and if you call a staff member, they'll cut them into bite-size pieces for you!

You know lamb chops really divide people, because of that lamb smell ㅠㅠ But I think Yukrab's lamb chops are better quality than most lamb specialty restaurants. No gamey smell, so tender and delicious! If you turn them to brown the outside, they're tender inside and nutty outside.

Cumin is the best match for lamb, right? I also tried it with the grilled cheese, and it was a nice treat haha

To finish, you have to gnaw the bone on the lamb chop haha My senior said she was full, so I ate two, hehe. So chewy and really delicious! Even if you're full, pick the bones clean like me (?)

If you're looking for a great-atmosphere spot near Jonggak Station for a company dinner or a date, I highly recommend Yukrab Jongno!