Seoul Station gyukatsu vs steki set, chili sauce and wasabi: Ichigyu

An exciting vacation daaaay, timed to meet my partner right after work at Seoul Station! I'd been craving gyukatsu for a while so I brought back a review of my visit to Ichigyu Seoul Station Branch. This is the kind of place where you get to enjoy the unique charm of gyukatsu — grilling it yourself on a personal tabletop brazier.

This is what the entrance looks like. Maybe because it was a weekday after-work rush, there were quite a lot of people.

Where is Ichigyu Seoul Station Branch, and what are its hours?

Ichigyu Seoul Station Branch is on the basement floor of Seoul Station, at 98 Huam-ro, B116, Jung-gu, Seoul, South Korea. Hours are daily 11:00–21:30, with a break time from 15:00–17:00. Reservations are also available through Catch Table.

As you'd expect from a popular spot, they have a Catch Table waitlist too. We got lucky and walked in with no wait, but it seems lunchtime tends to have quite a wait.

The interior is spacious and clean overall! Since a lot of the customers are office workers, some of the staff seemed to be the quiet type, focused purely on service and setting up the meal, haha.

Ichigyu's menu and the review event

Here's the menu. We ordered one each of the signature gyukatsu and the steki-jeongsik. Looking around at other tables, people seem to order a lot of curry and cold soba too. The other menu items also looked tasty.

⭐️We didn't do this ourselves, but if you take part in the review event you get extras like these — if you like cheese and rice cake, go for it!⭐️

What comes with the set: rice for two and the side dishes

First, the rice arrived! Instead of the usual tray-style serving, they uniquely bring rice for two people together in a wooden bowl, Japanese-style. There's plenty — enough for two people to eat until full with some left over — and it's fluffy, looking like it'd pair well with the meat.

The steki-jeongsik came out first! The visuals are amazing, hahaha. It comes with clear broth soup, salad, and meat, and the portion is pretty generous, haha. I'll cover the taste all at once further down.

This is the gyukatsu!! The composition is the same as the steki-jeongsik. The meat is cut thinner, more like tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet), and when you eat it, you can tell it's a different cut.

How to grill on a personal brazier heated with Isigny butter

The butter is the savory, delicious Isigny butter!! You place the meat on the mini personal brazier set at each table and cook it to your liking, haha. First you heat up the plate with butter, and

then you lay the meat on like this. The sizzling sound and smell were insane, ㅠㅠ. While grilling, if the plate gets burnt or too greasy, you can ask staff to swap it out. However, you have to ask several times, and they respond just by flicking their hand, which was a bit awkward 😅. Maybe they were in a bad mood because the air conditioner was broken that day, haha.

How the gyukatsu tastes: chili sauce with a dab of wasabi

Now for the taste review. The gyukatsu had a soft, melt-in-your-mouth feel!! No off smell, and it was delicious. It's great on its own, but I'd recommend actively using the sauces and side items provided👍. Personally, putting a little wasabi on top of the chili sauce created an insane sweet-and-salty combo... It went great with the rice too, and I finished a whole bowl of rice in no time!

How the steki set tastes, and which of the two to order

This is the meat from the steki-jeongsik! The quality of the meat is clearly good — the color of the meat is different.

Rather than a greasy or strongly flavored dish, the steki leaned toward lean meat with a clean, heavier chewing texture! Personally, I found the gyukatsu softer and more to my taste than the steki. If you prefer a clean flavor and a chewier bite, the steki will suit you more; if you like something soft and moist, the gyukatsu is more your style, haha. If you're looking for a place to eat near Seoul Station after work or for lunch, I think it's worth a visit 💓