Saetgang Station pork belly date night with soju: Smile Samgyeop

I went to Smile Samgyeop Main Branch near Saetgang Station, a pork belly place that's super popular with Yeouido office workers! They pile on a ton of minari (water dropwort), and the quality of the meat is really good too, so I enjoyed it so, so much, haha. It's great for company dinners and for wedding invitation get-togethers, so here's my review of Smile Samgyeop Main Branch in Yeouido near Saetgang Station!!!

Where is Smile Samgyeop Main Branch, and how close is it to Saetgang Station?

Smile Samgyeop Main Branch is on the ground floor of the Ohryun Building, near Yeouido Station and Saetgang Station. If you head for Yeouido Department Store or Lotte Castle, it's right next to them, so it should be easy to find!

After work, I wanted a date with my husband for the first time in a while, with pork belly and a glass of soju, so we headed to this famous pork belly place near Saetgang Station~~

Full even in the early evening: the vibe for company dinners and wedding invitation get-togethers

We finish work early, so we got to Smile Samgyeop early too, and it was already quite crowded! The atmosphere is nice and the food is delicious, so it's really popular with office workers nearby. There were company dinner tables and quite a few tables with wedding invitation get-togethers. On Naver Place I saw they even give a welcome gift for those groups, so it would be great if you're looking for a Yeouido spot for one, haha. We came for a date and of course loved it very, very much!

The staff were super friendly too, haha.

Smile Samgyeop Main Branch menu: from Korean pork to Korean beef

The menu has pork belly, five-layer pork belly, special neck cut, pork jowl and more. Besides Korean pork (handon), they also have Korean beef, so when it's a company dinner and not your own money, going for the beef would be great too.

There are also add-ons like grilling cheese and scallops, so you can enjoy it to your taste. And there are meal dishes too, so if you came straight for meat without eating first, you can add one and feel even more full!

Side dishes and the free kimchi stew

First, the basic sides include spring onion salad (pajeori) and wrap greens, and the spring onion salad went perfectly with the meat. The wrap greens were really fresh too~

Then a kimchi stew we hadn't ordered showed up, and I wondered what was going on, but at this Yeouido pork belly place the kimchi stew comes as a free service!

Thoughtful, right~~? The stew was pleasantly spicy with meat inside, and I felt like I could drink a whole bottle of soju with just this stew before the pork belly even came, haha.

Kimchi minari pork belly, grilled for you by the staff

Then the staff put whole kimchi on the grill,

and the kimchi minari pork belly came out looking great, just what you'd expect from a famous pork belly place near Saetgang Station~~!

It's Korean pork, not imported, and maybe that's why the quality was obviously so good, you know? It came with thick-cut onion and mushrooms too, haha.

A friendly staff member set everything up on the grill himself, the meat along with the kimchi, mushrooms and onion,

and came by every so often to grill it deliciously like this~! The place was packed so they must have been incredibly busy, but they were kind from start to finish and grilled it all so well without a single burnt piece. I was so, so grateful.

How much minari do they add at no extra charge?

Once the meat was cooked, the staff brought over a huge tub of minari from somewhere and piled it on, really heaps and heaps, so generously that I wondered if it was okay to put on this much.

No wonder it's called kimchi minari pork belly..!! At many places that advertise minari pork belly, you get just a tiny bit of minari and pay extra, but Smile Samgyeop Main Branch in Yeouido was incredibly generous.

The meat and minari are such fresh, good ingredients that even just putting minari on the meat and dipping it in sesame oil dip (gireumjang) was really delicious. The kimchi was amazing too, so the combination of these three was really great, haha. We had planned to drink just a little that day, but the pork belly was so good that we ended up overdoing it without realizing. I totally felt why Smile Samgyeop Main Branch is so popular for Yeouido company dinners.

From now on, whenever I'm craving minari pork belly in Yeouido, I'm definitely going to Smile Samgyeop! If you're looking for a pork belly place near Saetgang Station, a good spot for company dinners, or a place for a wedding invitation get-together, head to this Yeouido minari pork belly main branch~~~~