Bongdam couple's meal with sujanghyangmi hotpot rice: Hwadamga

Isn't the weather amazing these days ❤️ Just stepping outside with the cool breeze and warm sunshine puts me in a good mood. My husband and I went looking for a healthy meal this weekend and found Hwadamga, a grilled fish spot in Bongdam — and the self-serve bar there was incredible. So much delicious food that I really want to recommend this Bongdam restaurant!!! The pork was also super tasty 🔥

Hwadamga hours and parking

• Hours: Daily 11:00 ~ 22:00 / break time 15:00 ~ 17:00
• Last order 21:30
• 🚙 Parking: Yes (own parking lot in front of the restaurant)

Partitioned seats and a room — great for family gatherings

I didn't know Bongdam had a Korean restaurant like this — most seats are partitioned and the tables are big, plus there's a spacious room, so it's great for family gatherings. The owner was also super friendly ❤️👍🏻

The self-serve bar with 20-plus side dishes

Hwadamga's big strength is the self-serve bar with about 20 side dishes! Of course the main dishes are great too, but there are really so many tasty banchan on the bar haha

Braised zucchini, sautéed mushrooms, seasoned bracken fern, seasoned bok choy, sautéed eggplant, seasoned bean sprouts, seaweed stem, pickled peppers, stir-fried anchovies with chili, sautéed kimchi, seasoned bellflower root, young radish kimchi, radish salad, perilla leaf pickles, quail eggs. Whew, that's a lot, right?? It's not over yet 👀🙌🏻 There's fresh wrap greens, plus a vegetable salad and a tomato caprese salad 🥬🥒🍅

There's also japchae (glass noodle stir-fry), meat patties, and seaweed soup, along with a high chair and a kids' tray with spoon and fork. With all that, it really works for anyone, any age, right?

What we ordered and the full spread

• Wood-fired mackerel set ₩16,000
• Direct-fire pork set ₩16,000
• Sujanghyangmi hotpot rice ₩2,000

You can bring over as many side dishes from the self-serve bar as you like 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜 It really is such an appetizing spread!! Looking at it again makes me drool....😋

Barley rice vs. sujanghyangmi hotpot rice

Hwadamga's default rice is barley rice~ For 2,000 won more, you can get sujanghyangmi hotpot rice instead. Since there were so many veggie side dishes I wanted to mix into bibimbap, I went with barley rice, while my husband — who likes eating rice and side dishes separately — ordered the sujanghyangmi hotpot rice! The smell of that freshly cooked hotpot rice was absolutely amazing ❤️

There's seaweed soup at the self-serve bar, but Hwadamga's set menu also includes doenjang jjigae (soybean paste stew)! This stew was so good I wanted to pour rice into it too.

How's the direct-fire pork set?

As soon as I saw the pork, I wrapped it up and sent it straight to my mouth. The sauce was sweet yet you could still taste the savory flavor of the meat, and it wasn't too intense, so it was really delicious ❤️🔥 I scraped up every last bit of the vegetables too hahaha

Barley rice bibimbap made from self-serve bar side dishes

I brought over a bunch of different side dishes to make bibimbap! The snail miso on the left in the photo below looked like it was mixed with tofu, and that was also really, really good. (I'll probably say 'delicious' about a million times in this post 💘)

I added all kinds of vegetables and seasoned side dishes to the barley rice, drizzled a swirl of the sesame oil sitting on the table 💫, added gochujang (red chili paste), and mixed it all up. There were so many seasoned vegetables, but the bean sprouts, young radish kimchi, and sautéed eggplant were especially good 🙌🏻

The wood-fired mackerel is less salty

Next up, the grilled mackerel!! It's honestly on a different level from mackerel at home. Bongdam Hwadamga's grilled mackerel is less salty than other places, so it was delicious even with just fresh wasabi on top! It wasn't so salty that you had to eat it with rice — I loved getting to taste the plump, oily, rich flavor of the mackerel itself.

It's good eaten with the seasoned bellflower root too, and also delicious wrapped up with snail miso and mackerel haha. The wrap greens were so fresh that I wanted to wrap anything in them ✌🏻

I guess I ate all of that brown snail miso myself. It was so good I'm definitely coming back for it! The perilla leaf pickles with rice were an absolute rice thief 🤎 Rice has never gone down this smoothly~~

Meat patties, japchae, tomato caprese

There were meat patties and japchae too, and since there was ketchup near the salad bar with the lettuce, I dipped them in ketchup haha. My mom's meat patties used to be so good when I was little!! Suddenly I'm thinking of my mom 🥹 The salad and tomato caprese too~~ that tomato was seriously so good, but I couldn't eat more because my stomach was full haha

Our overall verdict as a couple

My husband and I basically ate like competitive eaters. I read in a pregnancy book that you shouldn't gain more than 2 kilos a month....!! I might be in trouble, since I'm getting close to that limit hahaha. The grilled mackerel was so moist and the pork practically demands to be wrapped!!🐟🍖🦴 The person cooking clearly has a great hand for it, because every single side dish was delicious 👍🏻 I highly🌟🌟🌟 recommend Hwadamga as a place for grilled fish, pork, and a family meal out in Bongdam 💝 I'll definitely be back!!