Incheon Korean BBQ with beef tartare and rib risotto: Nocheongol

Today's Sandaramji post is a review from Bupyeong — I took my pregnant friend Jeongmin out for good meat at a Bupyeong restaurant! It's Nocheongol Bupyeong Main Branch near Bupyeong Market Station, and we stuffed ourselves silly on seasoned pork ribs, Korean beef, beef tartare, and rice dishes!

So let's kick off today's Sandaramji post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where is Nocheongol Bupyeong Main Branch, and what are the hours?

Nocheongol Bupyeong Main Branch

'Nocheongol Bupyeong Main Branch'

• 📍 257-5 Buheung-ro, Bupyeong-gu, Incheon
• ⏰ Daily 11:30–22:00
• 🚗 Free public parking lot in front of the restaurant
• 💡 Group bookings, reservations, wifi, separate restrooms, takeout, high chairs, waiting area, parking

Outside Nocheongol Bupyeong Main Branch

Nocheongol sits near Bupyeong Market Station. It's a standalone building, so it wasn't hard to find at all! There's parking right in front and a nearby lot too, though it's worth expecting a wait during busy hours. Hours are 11:30–22:00, with a break time from 15:00 to 17:00, so keep that in mind!

Two floors with private rooms and group tables

Inside Nocheongol Bupyeong Main Branch

The inside was bigger than I expected! There's not just the first floor but a whole second floor too, with private rooms, group seating, and a waiting area, which makes it feel well suited for family gatherings or work dinners where a lot of people show up. There are high chairs and reservations are possible, so it seems to be a popular spot for family outings too.

Group seating for up to 80 people

This is one of Nocheongol's strengths! It's built for family gatherings, work dinners, friend hangouts, and every kind of group meal. Barbecue places can feel chaotic when the space is tight and tables are jammed together, but here the size is more than comfortable for group visits. The second-floor group space in particular is introduced as able to hold up to about 80 people, so it works well from small meals to big group gatherings.

Nocheongol Bupyeong Main Branch menu and prices

The menu is pretty varied!

• 🐷 Secret-recipe seasoned pork ribs
• 🐮 Pocheon-style yidong galbi / Suwon-style udae galbi
• 🥩 Korean beef sirloin / specialty Korean beef cuts
• 🥩 Signature Korean beef tartare (yukhoe) / beef sashimi
• 🍜 Hand-pulled Hamheung-style cold noodles, water or spicy
• 🍚 Soy-braised short rib risotto
• 🍺 Guinness draft / Heineken / Paulaner, and more

For lunch there are separate lunch specials too, like the galbi set or the gondre pot rice set!

Guinness draft at a Korean BBQ restaurant

What really stood out here was the 🍺 Guinness draft. Finding a Bupyeong barbecue place serving Guinness on tap was pretty unusual haha. Ribs plus Guinness — what a combo. If you like a stout while eating meat, this pairing is worth trying!

What two people ordered at Nocheongol

On this visit, Jeongmin and I ordered

• 🥩 Seasoned pork ribs, 2 servings
• 🥩 Signature Korean beef tartare
• 🍚 Soy-braised short rib risotto a.k.a. drinking rice
• 🍚 Extra rice

That's what we ate! >_< We stuffed ourselves silly, just the two of us, haha.

Side dishes: seasoned raw crab and six more

It's a barbecue place, but the side dishes came out pretty substantial too!

🥗 Jellyfish salad — tangy and sharp, good for a bite here and there between mouthfuls of seasoned ribs. The kind of flavor that really wakes up your palate!

🥬 Lettuce salad — crisp lettuce in a light, easy salad. Perfect for perking up your appetite before the meat comes out.

🦀 Bongpalsun-style seasoned crab — this was genuinely delicious haha (free refill, once). I assumed it was just a regular side-dish crab, but the seasoning was so well soaked in that I kept going back for more. There's even a standalone add-on version of this seasoned crab on the menu! Anyone who likes seasoned crab really needs to try this.

🍜 Japchae — not too salty, nicely mild japchae >_< good to pick at before the meat arrives.

🥕 Pickled carrots — at first glance I genuinely thought it was persimmon haha. The orange color threw me off, but it turned out to be sweet-and-tangy pickled carrot. Eating it between bites of meat cleans your palate right up!

🌿 Pickles — a mix of different pickled vegetables came out, good on their own but even better wrapped up with the meat. The salty-tangy flavor cut through the sweetness of the seasoned ribs nicely and paired really well with the meat!

🧅 Pickled onion — a must at any barbecue place! Sweet-tangy pickled onion paired with a piece of seasoned rib cut the richness and made the meat taste even cleaner.

Seasoned pork ribs for two, grilled by staff at the table

The first main dish we tried at Nocheongol! It's seasoned pork ribs marinated for 48 hours in a secret sauce, and the sweet-savory seasoning combined with the charcoal smoke made it taste exactly like ribs should. Best of all, a staff member grilled it for us, so all we had to do was eat comfortably. It was seriously so good. No conversation got interrupted by grilling duty, so it was great for chatting away with Jeongmin while we ate!

Seasoned ribs can get sickly sweet after a few pieces, but with the variety of side dishes like pickles, pickled onion, and jellyfish salad to mix in between bites, it never got old all the way through. Pork ribs plus charcoal smoke plus a bunch of side dishes — perfect, apparently...... >_<!

Soybean-paste short rib risotto, the "drinking rice"

And this drinking rice was such a hidden gem!!!!! It's a soybean-paste-based rice dish with whole short ribs in it — the name says risotto, but it's more like a rich, savory soybean paste drinking rice. The amount of meat in it is way more than you'd expect, making it feel like a solid value beef dish. After the meat, spooning up the broth at the end just keeps going in and in >_<

Signature Korean beef tartare (hanwoo yukhoe)

And the beef tartare I was personally most looking forward to! It's one of Nocheongol's signature dishes, made with 1+ grade Korean beef round cut, apparently! Instead of the usual long-cut style, it's plated prettily like a tartare, which is a nice touch. The savory, clean-tasting beef came with sweet, crisp pear pieces mixed in, and it went great slotted in between bites of ribs. Jeongmin said she'd want a beef tartare cake for her birthday sometime ^_____^!!!!!!

Verdict on Nocheongol Bupyeong Main Branch

Nocheongol Bupyeong Main Branch felt less like a place where you just eat meat and leave, and more like somewhere to have a proper full meal with all the extras. The seasoned pork ribs paired well with the charcoal smoke and sweet marinade, and the side dishes were more varied than I expected. The Bongpalsun-style seasoned crab in particular was so good I ordered an extra bowl of rice ㅇㅅㅇ some people might want to order it again after trying it as a side dish.

On top of that, with the signature Korean beef tartare and finally the soy-braised short rib risotto, one meal felt seriously, seriously filling~~~~ There are also lunch specials available if you want meat plus a meal at good value on a given day. And with staff grilling the meat for you — which matters more than you'd think at a barbecue place — plus group seating, a wide menu, and Guinness on tap, it was a good all-round spot for dates, family outings, and work dinners alike!

Who Nocheongol is best for

• ✔️ Anyone looking for a great charcoal-grilled seasoned rib restaurant in Bupyeong
• ✔️ Anyone who wants a variety of side dishes alongside their pork ribs
• ✔️ Anyone who loves seasoned crab
• ✔️ Anyone who finds grilling their own meat a hassle haha
• ✔️ Anyone who wants beef tartare or a rice dish to round out a meat meal
• ✔️ Anyone looking for good-value lunch specials with meat
• ✔️ Anyone looking for a barbecue place for a family outing or work dinner with a group
• ✔️ Anyone who wants Guinness on tap with their meat

Personally, I'd recommend this order: seasoned pork ribs → seasoned crab → beef tartare → drinking rice, finishing by scraping the rice bowl clean at the end haha.