Mapo yakitori bar weekday date with chicken nanban: Yakitori Shomong

What is Yakitori Shomong Mapo Station Branch like?

Yakitori Shomong Mapo Station Branch (야키토리쇼몽 마포역점) is a Japanese yakitori bar at 26 Dohwa-gil, Mapo-gu, Seoul (1st floor), between Gongdeok Station and Mapo Station. My boyfriend and I came for yakitori, and here we are at Yakitori Shomong! I'd wanted to try it for a while, and a weekday evening finally opened up, so we went right away.

On a nice day like this, Yakitori Shomong's Mapo branch is a great yakitori spot for beer with an open-air feel.

Seating and the open kitchen

Inside there are counter seats (dacci) and tables, and it suits dates or groups of up to 4.

At the back there's an open kitchen where you can watch the skewers being grilled.

How do you book and order?

You can reserve through Catch Table, and you order from your phone. The table was already set, and I'd booked ahead on Catch Table. We started with the 6-skewer course.

First skewer of the 6-skewer course: chicken tenderloin and the side dish

First out in the 6-skewer course was the chicken tenderloin. Seriously juicy and so good. It was so tender and savory I wondered if it was really tenderloin, a great opener for Yakitori Shomong.

The side dish is seasoned gungchae (stem lettuce), salty and crunchy, and it went well with the yakitori.

And of course, the beer! We ordered Kelly as our first-round beer.

Our evening starts with Kelly! Dinner after work really is the best!

If you want some heat, each table has shichimi (Japanese chili powder) you can dip the skewers in, and that's tasty too.

Isn't chicken cartilage supposed to be hard?

The chicken cartilage at Yakitori Shomong has cartilage attached to tender chicken meat, so it's chewy and savory. The green onion was grilled well too, with a smoky aroma.

The atmosphere is great too, perfect for a date. I highly recommend it as a date spot near Mapo Station!

It's cartilage but not hard at all, tender and savory, and I loved the crunchy bite.

Review event: fig cream cheese crackers

And this is the fig cream cheese cracker we got for the review event. A true beer snack. Sweet fig cream cheese on a cracker... I've started loving a simple snack with a beer these days. Does that mean I'm getting old? haha

Why Yakitori Shomong's tsukune is the best of the course

Next came the tsukune (chicken meatball skewer)! I finally got to try Shomong's tsukune. It was so good I teared up. My boyfriend ordered it again! It was my first tsukune, and starting from the smoky aroma, one bite bursts with juice, and then you taste the soy sauce inside and the richness of the poached egg... I'm giving this one first place in the course.

Not greasy at all, really tender, and the rich poached-egg sauce was a perfect match.

Heart and chicken neck

Next was the heart. Yakitori Shomong's heart isn't tough at all and has a real heart flavor. The tsukune is great, but the heart was just as good.

Then the chicken neck. Tender and chewy, and really good. Every skewer was grilled so well, from the smoky aroma to the doneness. Shomong is a Seoul yakitori spot I want to go back to.

If the 6-skewer course isn't enough, add chicken nanban

The 6-skewer course alone felt a little short, so we ordered chicken nanban (fried chicken in sweet-sour sauce). It's homemade chicken with homemade nanban sauce and cabbage on top, and the sauce was totally my style. Sweet, great with the chicken, and best of all it went so well with the cabbage that I ordered one more beer haha

The last skewer: chicken wings

And finally, the grand finale: chicken wings! What can I say about wings. The bones slid right out, a fitting end to Shomong's 6-skewer course.

Who should go to Yakitori Shomong Mapo Station Branch?

Yakitori Shomong Mapo Station Branch suits dates, group get-togethers, and solo drinks at the counter. The two of us ate hard. My boyfriend ordered one more tsukune, which says how good it was at this Mapo favorite. Great atmosphere and perfect for a drink, with tender chicken dishes, cold beer, and a variety of other drinks like sake and highballs.

It's a 3-minute walk from Mapo Station, and the place isn't very loud and feels open, a really good atmosphere for drinking. That was Yakitori Shomong Mapo Station Branch, a Gongdeok bar.