Daegu Korean restaurant, weekday afternoon for two: Banwoldang

Eat eat eat!

Remember 'Banwoldang Bujasikdang' (반월당부자식당), the fire-grilled Korean restaurant I posted about a while back with insane smoky flavor? This time I visited the main branch, famous as a top spot for Korean food near Banwoldang! It's so well known for fire-grilled dishes and Korean cooking that there's a lunchtime wait 👍🏻👍🏻

I went on a weekday afternoon, and the main branch was just as crazy with smoky flavor — the squid was hearty too, satisfying even the friend I brought along. Let me get into the post right away ⛤

Banwoldang Bujasikdang hours, closing day and parking

• 📍13-13 Gwandeokjeong-gil, Jung-gu, Daegu, South Korea, 1st floor
• ⌛️OPEN 11:00 / CLOSE 20:45
• Break time 15:30-17:00
• Closed every Sunday
• 🅿️No parking ❌
• ✔️Reservations, takeout, delivery, and group dining available ⭕️

Two minutes from Banwoldang Station Exit 21: the exterior and dining room

Banwoldang Bujasikdang (반월당부자식당), a well-known Korean restaurant near Banwoldang in Daegu, is super accessible — just a 2-minute walk from Exit 21 of Banwoldang Station! It's tucked in a small alley behind the NongHyup building right in front of Exit 21, so it was easy to find.

There are a lot of offices around here, so it's packed during lunchtime with office workers, and even outside of lunch hours customers kept streaming in because it's so close to Banwoldang Station. Definitely a beloved Korean restaurant here :) The exterior looked clean and well-kept, just like a place that's held onto its reputation as a great Daegu Korean restaurant for a long time.

Inside, the 2-seat and 4-seat tables are neatly arranged, so it seemed like a quiet spot for lunch, and also great for a date or a gathering!

The menu: fire-grilled squid and pork stir-fry for two, 14,000 won

The signature dishes at Banwoldang Bujasikdang (반월당부자식당) are the smoky stir-fried squid and stir-fried pork, and there's also a combo for people who want both at once — great for trying the signatures all in one go 👍🏻👍🏻 They said ordering a signature dish also comes with a free country-style cheonggukjang (fermented soybean) stew, which is not bad value at all, right??

So we ordered:

• Fire-grilled squid-pork combo for two, ₩14.0k x 2
• 1 bowl of rice, ₩1.0k

That's what we went with.

How does the self-serve ssam vegetable bar work?

You can grab the ssam (wrap) vegetables to eat with the squid-pork combo from the self-serve bar. The vegetables looked really fresh and cleanly maintained, so I could trust eating them.

There were also peppers and soybean paste, so it felt like a healthy meal :)

Side dishes and the free cheonggukjang soybean stew

The side dishes were seaweed stem, seasoned bean sprouts, spicy radish salad, cabbage salad, and pickled onion — slightly different from the Suseong branch. The Banwoldang location leans a bit more toward healthy sides that older folks tend to like, so it seems like a good place to bring your parents too.

They also give you a free soybean paste soup here, and I was shocked at how it was almost as much as the main dish. Talk about great value!! I heard it's a soybean paste soup mixed with a bit of cheonggukjang, and it genuinely tasted like grandma's homemade soup — my friend and I were both amazed as we ate it. Especially scooped up with tofu, it felt like my whole body melted, so we kept spooning it up haha

How the squid and pork taste: which one wins?

Finally, Banwoldang Bujasikdang's signature fire-grilled dish arrived. Every time I come, I notice the stone plate seems pre-heated, because the dish comes out so fast — the nearby office workers must really appreciate that. The sauce sizzling away on the hot stone plate looked incredibly delicious.

The portion is huge!! It's meant for two, but it was enough for three people, and best of all it wasn't padded out with onions or scallions — there was genuinely a ton of squid and pork in there.

Wow, this is exactly the taste. The seasoning is the kind that makes you devour a whole bowl of rice, the smoky flavor is truly packed in, and the sauce clings to your mouth so perfectly that mixing it with rice was mind-blowing 👍🏻👍🏻 The sauce was a bit sweet, so I think it would have been amazing with rice cake sticks tossed in too :)

If you're torn between squid and pork, I personally recommend the pork!! The squid was hearty and tender too, but the pork soaked up the sauce a little better, giving it that irresistible, mouth-clinging flavor haha

Wrapping it up in the ssam vegetables made it feel like a truly hearty Korean meal — a very satisfying dining time 🥄

The onions inside were especially excellent, and mixing everything with the side dishes and rice was genuinely delicious 👍🏻👍🏻

Final verdict: would my friend return to Banwoldang Bujasikdang?

It was so good that I brought a friend along, and even they said 100% they'd come back to Banwoldang Bujasikdang (반월당부자식당). If you're looking for a good-value Korean restaurant near Banwoldang, definitely check it out :)