Goyang weekday dinner with braised cutlassfish set: Min Cook Apbadang

Still missing my Jeju trip, I went to Min Cook Apbadang Seongsa, a Seongsa-dong restaurant specializing in seasonal grilled fish, about four minutes from Hwajeong Station and four minutes from IKEA Goyang. It was hard to believe it was a weekday evening — the place was packed with families — and the food was neat and tidy, with free refills at the banchan self-bar, so I ate comfortably and happily.

We hadn't had it in a while, so we each ordered the grilled and braised silver cutlassfish sets. Fish dishes like cutlassfish are delicious, but cooking them at home in the air fryer is such a hassle with the cleanup that I rarely do it. So it was really nice to eat it warm and comfortably here — here's my review!

Where is Min Cook Apbadang Seongsa? Hours and parking

• Location: 60-1 Heungdo-ro 415beon-gil, Deogyang-gu, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 1st floor
• Hours: Tue–Fri 10:50–21:00 (break 15:00–16:30 / last order 20:00), Sat–Sun 10:50–20:30 (break 15:30–16:30 / last order 19:30)
• Monday: closed
• Parking: free parking in front and beside the restaurant (you'll need to move your car right after eating)

Min Cook Apbadang, a Seongsa-dong restaurant about four minutes from Hwajeong Station and four minutes from IKEA Goyang, was really convenient to park at.

There looked to be room for about 4 cars out front, and there was a separate parking area right beside the restaurant, but since you need to move your car soon after eating, just keep that in mind! We parked quickly and hurried inside under the sunset.

Min Cook Apbadang also sells a separate boxed meal set. It's only in the ₩10,000s, but it's packed with fish and bulgogi, so if I lived nearby I'd want to order it too, haha.

Inside Min Cook Apbadang Seongsa: entrance, seating and jang and soy-marinated crab for sale

At the entrance of Min Cook Apbadang Seongsa, they sell perilla oil, soy sauce, and sesame oil. The soy sauce here is genuinely delicious. It has a sweetish flavor that's on a totally different level from the big-brand versions you buy at the store — I'd love to buy a bottle sometime, and honestly plan to pick some up as a seasoning sauce once mine runs out.

You can keep drinking free sikhye (sweet rice punch) and coffee for dessert, and that was such a nice touch, haha.

They also sell banchan as well as soy-marinated crab, marinated abalone, spicy marinated crab, and marinated shrimp. I remember trying the domestic blue crab soy-marinated crab before and it was genuinely delicious! Haha. And true to a seasonal grilled fish specialist, it was nice to see the day's grilled fish set change depending on the number of diners.

This was my first time ever eating wild bottom cod, and it was so tasty, clean-tasting, and free of any fishy smell that I later went back and bought two whole ones to take home and eat by themselves, haha. The interior has wide tables like this, set up comfortably whether you're 2, 4, or a bigger group. We took a table for two in the back and ordered by kiosk. There was also a full menu board outside the restaurant, so I photographed it — take a look if it's helpful.

What we ordered in Seongsa-dong and what it cost

We'd had the seasonal grilled fish set before, so this time we ordered what my wife wanted to try: the grilled silver cutlassfish set at ₩25,000 per person and the braised silver cutlassfish set at ₩27,000 per person — two servings total. Then I took some photos of the packaged fish area and the self-bar.

In the bottom right corner is the grilled wild bottom cod at ₩6,900 per fish — you really have to try it. It's tender and pleasantly chewy without being off-putting, with no bones, no off smell, and no fishy taste at all — even people who don't like fish would probably enjoy it. It was such a delicious fish.

I hadn't known, but they've recently started selling sushi boxed meals made by a sushi master too. And the weekday lunch special set is ₩15,900–₩20,000, which is great value, so I should come back for lunch sometime, haha.

What's on the banchan self-serve bar

The self-bar at Min Cook Apbadang has all kinds of healthy banchan you can comfortably refill.

Personally, the pickled red pepper was really good — sweet and a bit spicy. The bracken fern was excellent too. There was also japchae (glass noodle stir-fry) and dried radish-green soybean paste soup you could scoop out on one side, which I loved.

After a bit, they set out the banchan, all of which you could freely refill at the self-bar. There was also a fresh lettuce salad topped with cheese, plus cabbage and vegetables with wrap sauce for making lettuce wraps.

I loved that the banchan on the self-bar came out in what looked like proper ceramic dishes. Most Korean restaurants serve banchan in plastic bowls, which usually doesn't bother me much, but somehow banchan served in dishes like these that look like porcelain just tastes better, you know? Haha.

Buckwheat cabbage pancake: good enough to order twice

They also brought out a side dish I personally consider the signature item at Min Cook Apbadang: buckwheat cabbage pancake! The soy dipping sauce was extra delicious today, mild and just right, so partway through I ended up ordering another one on the side — can you believe it, haha!

While we were happily munching on the buckwheat cabbage pancake, our main order — the grilled and braised silver cutlassfish — arrived.

How were the grilled and braised silver cutlassfish sets?

The grilled silver cutlassfish set is ₩25,000 per person, and the braised silver cutlassfish set is ₩27,000 per person. Min Cook Apbadang's silver cutlassfish looked about twice the size of the ones I'd eaten in Jeju. And the braised cutlassfish's spicy red sauce got my mouth watering the moment it arrived. Sotbap (hot-pot rice) came out shortly after too. When I asked, they said that even if two people order just one set plus a separate grilled fish side, sotbap still comes with it!

First we scooped out some of the hot sotbap rice, quickly poured hot water in to make sungnyung (scorched rice tea), and got ready to properly dig in! We started by settling our stomachs with the mild, tasty banchan.

After freshening up with the salad, my wife — who's much better at deboning fish than I am — kindly picked the meat off the grilled silver cutlassfish and set it on my spoon.

I took a big bite. I also dipped some into wasabi soy sauce just to mix things up. That mouthful of silver cutlassfish... oh my. It didn't taste like a restaurant in Seongsa-dong, Goyang — it tasted like something from a famous cutlassfish spot in Sokcho or Jeju. Barely any fishy smell, clean-tasting, and honestly quite excellent.

If the grilled cutlassfish was this good, I figured the braised version would be too, of course.

I picked up a piece of the braised silver cutlassfish, and the heft of it when I lifted a single piece with chopsticks — it felt like lifting up an entire mackerel!

I picked out just the cutlassfish flesh, mixed it with rice, and topped it with a well-braised piece of radish. That first bite had a sweet, spicy flavor that spread pleasantly through my mouth, a bit like the spiciness of tteokbokki. If anything, the sauce had soaked so well into the fish flesh that...

How spicy is the braised cutlassfish?

Personally, I thought the braised silver cutlassfish had even more savory depth than the grilled version, probably because the seasoning blended in so well — it was seriously addictive. I'm someone who can't handle spicy food very well — even with mala tang I go for the 0.5 mild level instead of the basic level 1 — and by that low-spice-tolerance standard, the braised cutlassfish was about as spicy as a basic level 1 mala tang. If you can handle spice well, it'll taste perfectly pleasantly spicy; for someone like me, it was right at the edge of delicious-spicy. Maybe that's why I ended up mixing so much rice into the sauce, haha.

Chatting away happily with my wife while we ate, time flew by and we finished everything. They packed up the remaining chunk of braised and grilled cutlassfish for us to take home, which we happily ate again the next day. And if you do the receipt review event...

...you can also get seasoned squid. It was great to write a happy review and get 100g of seasoned squid worth ₩5,500 on top of it. We ate so well.

Is Min Cook Apbadang Seongsa worth a weekday dinner for two?

Near Seongsa-dong in Deogyang-gu, Goyang, there's Hwajeong Station, IKEA Goyang, and Starfield Goyang, so there are plenty of good restaurants around. Still, a place where you can eat truly seasonal grilled fish like you'd only get near the coast is rare.

Personally, rather than a plain fish like mackerel, being able to eat various seasonal grilled fish like cod, gurnard, and rockfish at Min Cook Apbadang made me want to come back again. The banchan is delicious, but the staff were also incredibly kind and attentive, which made the whole experience feel really good. Next time I'll come with four people and try a variety of the grilled fish sets. Thanks for the meal!