Korean set meal with parents in Gyeongju: abalone pot rice, Handa Sot

Looking for a Hwangnidan-gil restaurant with no break time that's good to take your parents to?!

Handa Sot Gyeongju's location — easy to fit into a Hwangnidan-gil and Cheomseongdae route

Handa Sot Gyeongju is on Cheomseong-ro in Gyeongju, so it's easy to tie into a sightseeing route covering Hwangnidan-gil and Cheomseongdae. That made it a good pick for a meal spot during our Gyeongju trip. Especially since you end up walking around way more than expected while touring Gyeongju all day.

After looking around Daereungwon or Cheomseongdae and then Hwangnidan-gil, you get pretty hungry, and at that point a proper meal beats a light snack every time. So this time, instead of looking for cafés or desserts first, I searched for a Gyeongju restaurant for a real meal, and that's how I ended up at Handa Sot.

Based on the store info currently available, Handa Sot Gyeongju is registered as a Korean restaurant, and its visitor ratings are pretty high too. Best of all, as the name suggests, I liked that you can have a meal centered around pot rice (solbap).

The store entrance!

There's a parking lot too, so that was convenient!!

If you reserve through Catch Table, you can get in without any wait!

Window seats with a Naemulwang Tomb view, and baby chairs too

Here's what the inside of Handa Sot Gyeongju looks like! I sat at the table near the entrance haha. The view was great and the table was spacious, so it was really nice!! But on a day with strong sun, if you're someone who feels the heat a lot, sitting by the window might be tough..? We're the type who feels the AC's cold air a lot though, so it actually worked out great for us haha.

There are baby chairs too, just so you know!

If you take a photo from our seat, Naemulwang Tomb is right there in view haha. The view was so good!!!

A 9-dish table setting of side dishes

Before our ordered food came out!! They set the side dishes first 🩵🩵

Every single side dish was delicious ㅜㅜㅜ 9 side dishes in total! They set it up as a 9-dish table (9-cheop bansang) ㄷㄷㄷㄷ

We ordered abalone pot rice for two

Check the menu!! We ordered abalone pot rice for two people!

There's a review event going on too, so make sure to join in!!

Ooh, as soon as it came out they scooped the rice and abalone into separate bowls!!

Warm rice and Korean food really is the way to go with parents

Picking a restaurant is oddly one of the trickier parts of a Gyeongju trip! Especially when traveling with parents — pretty, famous places are nice, but in the end you find yourself looking for a solid Gyeongju Korean restaurant where you can have a proper meal.

On this Gyeongju trip, we stopped by Handa Sot Gyeongju while walking around Hwangnidan-gil and Cheomseongdae. There are so many good restaurants around Hwangnidan-gil that it was hard to decide where to go, but for eating with parents, warm rice and Korean food is still the safest bet with the highest satisfaction. Bottom line: if you're looking for a Gyeongju Hwangnidan-gil restaurant to eat at with your parents, Handa Sot was solid.

When traveling with parents, your standards for picking a restaurant shift a bit. Personally, I prefer places that serve warm rice + side dishes + a main dish together, rather than food that's too spicy or heavily fusion. My parents like this Korean-food style too, so we went with Handa Sot, and sure enough, this kind of menu setup is easy for eating together as a family.

When you keep eating out during a Gyeongju trip, the food can start to feel heavy or too intense, but building the meal around pot rice felt hearty without feeling like a burden. And the great thing about Korean food is that when there are several of you, everyone can pick their own side dishes or main dish to suit their taste! So I thought this would work well for anyone looking for a place for a Gyeongju family meal.

Ooh — can you see how generous the abalone portion is???

The abalone came out really full and generous, which I loved!!!

The tastiest side dish was the black sesame braised lotus root

I especially loved this black sesame braised lotus root side dish!! Black sesame is just so good ㅜㅜㅜㅜ

And there's more to say about the other side dishes too,,, they were so good!!! Korean food really takes a lot of hands-on effort, and the side dishes were so delicious it genuinely moved me ㅜㅜㅜㅜ

A great spot to take a pretty photo of your parents with the background too ☺️👍

Pot rice all the way to the last nurungji

What I was looking forward to most at Handa Sot was, of course, the pot rice! Freshly cooked pot rice definitely feels different from regular rice in a bowl. Seeing the pot rice come out warm with the grains glossy just made me hungry looking at it. Notably, they use Gyeongju Isageum rice to cook the pot rice, which is said to bring out a chewy, glossy texture.

Since the rice itself was so good, it paired even better with the main dish. I'm not usually a big rice eater, but when freshly cooked pot rice like this comes out while traveling, I somehow end up eating more than usual.

And the real charm of pot rice is really at the end! After finishing the rice, eating the nurungji (scorched rice) left in the pot makes the meal feel properly complete. Eating the warm, nutty nurungji made my parents especially happy too.

Final review — Daereungwon → Hwangnidan-gil → Cheomseongdae → meal route

📍Final review. When picking a restaurant on a Gyeongju trip, location matters just as much as the food. Handa Sot Gyeongju is on Cheomseong-ro, so it's a great spot to search for alongside restaurants near Cheomseongdae.

If you're traveling Gyeongju with your parents like I did, planning your route as 📍Daereungwon → Hwangnidan-gil → Cheomseongdae → meal💫 works pretty well. A lot of Gyeongju's sights are close to each other, so if you pick one restaurant and tour the nearby sights around it, the route is much easier.

Hwangnidan-gil in particular has a lot to see and plenty of cafés, so it was nice for a slow stroll after the meal too. So when looking for a Hwangnidan-gil restaurant in Gyeongju, I'd recommend thinking about the route with Cheomseongdae and Daereungwon too, rather than just looking within Hwangnidan-gil itself.