Mapo tofu and Harbin beer at Apgujeong Chinese restaurant Bobo Sikdang

If you're looking for modern Chinese dining, I'd recommend this place. There are quite a few unusual dishes on the menu, and it feels like somewhere you could bring an important gathering, too.

What kind of Chinese restaurant is Bobo Sikdang Apgujeong?

Bobo Sikdang Apgujeong is a Chinese restaurant near Apgujeong Rodeo where you can enjoy a variety of Chinese dishes, cooking-focused rather than noodle-focused. It's on the ground floor, and along with the main hall there are room-style seats too, which makes it look like a good option for group meals.

There are so many Blue Ribbon stickers lined up by the entrance that counting them stops meaning anything. The interior is clean and modern, decorated well enough that you'd hardly guess it's a Chinese restaurant.

Private rooms at Bobo Sikdang and the group dining mood

Given the atmosphere, Bobo Sikdang Apgujeong seems like it would work fine even for a formal meeting between families, or for a comfortable outing with your parents. There are large tables and even a standalone private hall, so booking ahead seems like the way to go.

What is on the Bobo Sikdang menu?

You can see the Bobo Sikdang menu has quite a lot of alcohol options, and the dish selection has more unusual items than you'd expect — though it's not an overwhelming number of choices. (Some Chinese restaurants have menus that run several volumes like books, haha.)

There's plenty of jjajangmyeon-type noodle dishes among the meal options too, so it seems fine to drop in for something light as well.

The order: Harbin beer, mapo tofu, braised eel

This time the order was Harbin beer, mapa tofu, and braised eel. First came the basic side dish, gungchae (Chinese celtuce) with chili oil.

It's a bit different from jjasai (Sichuan pickled mustard tuber) — the crunchy celtuce combined with the aroma of chili oil and a slight kick made a great appetite-opener before the Chinese dishes. It seems like a small thing, but that lingering chili oil aroma paired really well with the beer.

Mapo tofu: tofu as soft as sundubu

Bobo Sikdang's mapa tofu can be ordered with noodles or rice, but this time it was ordered as a standalone dish. Right away, there's a generous amount of chili oil in it.

There's also plenty of minced meat, and the distinct mala (numbing spicy) aroma comes through clearly. That said, it's not a style where the mala flavor overwhelms everything — the meat and chili oil blend together to build a rich, layered flavor overall.

The tofu's texture is interesting too. Rather than the firmer tofu you'd usually expect, it's closer to sundubu — silken, soft, and easily crumbling, so the rich sauce coats it naturally.

With the chili oil and mala-heavy sauce carried by such soft tofu, it seems like it would go really well with rice too.

The spacious atmosphere is really nice.

Braised eel: reduced soy sauce and a tangy sauce

Braised eel. It's listed on the menu as one of Bobo Sikdang's signature dishes, and after going back and forth between this and dongpo pork, I ordered it — and it turned out to be quite a distinctive dish.

The eel is very tender. Eaten on its own, you get the soft texture along with the eel's characteristic aroma, but dipping it generously in the reduced sauce underneath changes things entirely. The rich soy sauce aroma latches onto the eel's flavor and the taste really lifts.

The tangy sauce served alongside is another highlight. Tasting the sauce alone at first, the sourness — like Chinese-style vinegar — was quite strong, and honestly I wondered what it was meant for.

But paired with the eel, it goes crazy. The tanginess cuts through the eel's rich, savory flavor and clears away any greasiness, putting a period on the whole taste. The sourness that felt sharp on its own becomes exactly the right note once it meets the eel.

A strong ginger aroma also comes through. There's a bit of the eel's own characteristic scent that could feel slightly fishy — people sensitive to that eel aroma might have mixed feelings. But the way that scent is reined in by the rich soy-based reduced sauce, the ginger, and the tangy sauce, layering several flavors together, ended up being something I quite liked.

Combining the reduced sauce and the tangy sauce together really elevates the whole dish. I'd recommend not eating the eel alone but scooping up plenty of the reduced sauce underneath with each bite.

Verdict: come to Bobo Sikdang for the cooked dishes

Overall, Bobo Sikdang takes a different direction from the typical jjajang- or jjamppong-centered Chinese restaurant. The dish menu is the focus, and it seems well-suited to ordering Chinese-flavor-forward dishes like mapa tofu or braised eel one at a time to share.

Next time it'd be fun to try the dongpo pork, and while the braised eel's aroma might be divisive for some, I felt it was a genuinely well-composed dish precisely because it's built to be eaten with multiple sauces and aromas layered together, scent and all.

If you're in Apgujeong and want to try something a bit different from the usual Chinese menu, I'd recommend picking from Bobo Sikdang's cooked dishes.