Busan BBQ with parents: extra pork cheek & garlic stems, Daepae Maket

🥓 My mom said she wanted meat, so I took my parents to Daepae Maket Busan Daeyeon Branch (대패마켙 부산대연점). When I suggested it, she said she'd heard it was good and had been wanting to go! A friend had recommended it to me too, so it seems to be pretty famous around the neighborhood, haha.

Daepae Maket Daeyeon: location, hours and parking

Daepae Maket Busan Daeyeon Branch is right outside Exit 5 of Daeyeon Station in Busan. It's open every day, 16:00–01:00 on weekdays and 11:30–01:00 on weekends (last order 00:00). There's no parking lot of its own, but if you use a nearby lot they cover 1 hour per table.

• ① Modeun Jucha-jang (모든주차장)
• ② Gallery Medi Tower (갤러리메디타워)
• ③ Gagahoho Parking (가가호호파킹)
• ④ Asyure Parking Lot (아슈레주차장)
• ⑤ Sin Parking Lot (신주차장)

👧🏻 There's also a play room for little kids.

Daepae Maket Daeyeon exterior and waiting area

I heard Daepae Maket Daeyeon was renovated and reopened in May! Maybe that's why it looked so clean from the outside to the inside. It's right by Exit 5 of Daeyeon Station, so it's very easy to reach and easy to find.

If there's a wait, there are plenty of chairs in front of the restaurant, so waiting looked comfortable. There are also gacha machines on the right. (A kids' zone, haha, so cute)

Daepae Maket Daeyeon has a whopping five partner parking lots!!! No need to worry about parking. All five are about a 5-minute walk away. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Is Daepae Maket Daeyeon spacious and clean inside?

The layout has a big self-bar in the middle with lots of tables on both sides, so it looked good for group meals and company dinners too. The place is sooo big...! Probably because of the recent renovation, it was very pleasant and clean. Loved it!

Another plus: the tables are really wide! At a place with a self-bar, small tables get cluttered with nowhere to put things, which is chaotic and annoying. But the tables at Daepae Maket Daeyeon are roomy, so I could order as much as I wanted and bring back as much as I liked from the self-bar.

And every seat has a fan..! When they showed us to our table, they told us to use the fan if we got hot. Even with the air conditioning on, grilling meat can get hot, so I thought that was a thoughtful touch.

One more small thing that made me happy... the spoon-and-chopstick holder has a lid...! 🥹 Usually when utensils are kept in a table drawer, the holder is open with no lid, but here it's covered, which looked hygienic and gave me the feeling they pay attention to even the smallest details.

Kids' play room with a CCTV screen

There's a play room at the back of the restaurant, so it seems like a good place to bring kids. I took a quick peek and the shoe rack in the play room was totally full that day, haha.

There's also a CCTV screen set up in front of the play room, so you can see inside from outside. In fact, a group of moms was meeting at the table in front of that screen that day!

They're running various events for the renovation reopening, so if you visit, definitely join in~ I entered too, haha. Fingers crossed that I win!!!

Daepae Maket Daeyeon menu and ordering rules

The first order has to be at least 500g of meat, and you can mix cuts! A review event was running too, and ice cream is served after you finish.

There's a wide variety of meat: selected Jeju pork, Duroc black pork, premium beef, clean-fed duck and makchang (grilled pork intestine). We ordered thin-sliced pork belly and pork cheek from the selected Jeju pork.

There are so many meal options for after the meat that it'd be hard to choose... hahaha. Daepae Maket, where you can enjoy so many things~~~ 😋

What's in Daepae Maket's ₩2,000-per-person self-bar?

The self-bar at Daepae Maket Daeyeon costs ₩2,000 per person and is almost as big as a shabu-shabu place's... I've never seen a self-bar this big at a thin-sliced pork place. For this much, it's a total bargain..!

There are three sections like this: one for kimchi, peppers, garlic and ssamjang (seasoned dipping paste); one for ingredients you can grill; and one for vegetables.

• First section: kimchi types such as seasoned bean sprouts, napa cabbage kimchi, green onion kimchi and dried radish strips
• Second section: corn, garlic stems, pickled radish wraps, sausage, bracken, sundae (Korean blood sausage), rice cakes, potatoes, mushrooms
• Third section: onions, shredded green onion and other wrap vegetables
• Sauces: onion soy sauce, green onion sauce, sesame oil, curry powder, wasabi (ssamjang is separate)

I grilled the bean sprouts and napa cabbage kimchi, and also brought green onion kimchi to wrap in the meat. The second section has so many kinds, and every one was in good condition and kept very clean, which I liked.

Last, the wrap vegetables including onions and shredded green onion! See how clean the vegetables look? 🫨 There's a lot of variety, and everything was super fresh and clean, so my mom loved it. The person who eats more vegetables than meat at a BBQ place = my mom.. Parents love being able to take as many vegetables as they like!

Another thoughtful point for Daepae Maket, +1. Plates are set out above the salad bar for you to take freely, and they come in lots of types and sizes. At self-bars with only one size of plate, it can be quietly inconvenient depending on what and how much you bring, but here they have wide plates, deep plates, long plates, big plates, everything...! So convenient and nice!

What three of us ordered with my parents, and the prices

• Self-bar, adult ₩2,000 x 3 people
• Jeju thin-sliced pork belly, ₩6,900 per 100g x 3 (300g)
• Jeju pork cheek, ₩6,900 per 100g x 5 (500g)
• Seafood doenjang stew ₩6,000
• Rice ₩1,000

Free fish cake soup served in a kettle

Interestingly, Daepae Maket Daeyeon serves fish cake soup (odeng-tang) by default. It comes in a kettle, so it was easy to pour the broth into a paper cup. The broth was so good I kept drinking it... And there's a separate burner just for the kettle, which was cute..! You can order extra fish cake skewers too!

The meat is sliced right away with a meat slicer as soon as you order.

With the vegetables I loaded up at the self-bar, I was ready to eat. I don't usually like grilling things other than meat and vegetables, so I rarely do, but I was curious and brought just a little. And surprisingly, the sundae was so chewy and delicious when grilled!

Jeju thin-sliced pork belly at ₩6,900 per 100g: how good is the meat?

The selected Jeju pork at Daepae Maket Daeyeon is very cheap at ₩6,900 per 100g, yet the quality is so good..!!! And here's today's star at last! The moment my mom and dad saw the meat, they said they must be using good meat here.

First up, the thin-sliced pork belly. I unrolled the curled slices and grilled them, and they cooked very quickly. When ordering you can choose the thickness, regular or slightly thick, and we went with regular! What can I say about the taste........... It's just delicious 🤤🤤🤤

Grilling vegetables too~! I already like grilling bracken and bean sprouts, but grilling garlic stems like this was amazingly good. I got hooked and ate so many garlic stems... They add a crisp, crunchy texture to the meat.

Why the Jeju pork cheek was the real star

The Jeju pork cheek (ppol-hangjeong) at Daepae Maket Daeyeon was tender and chewy, and it was the best dish of the day. After finishing the thin-sliced pork belly, I grilled the pork cheek, and the meat quality looked great here too!

...! This one is seriously crazy. The pork cheek is really delicious.... Tender, chewy, just insanely good... ㅠㅠ

Why is this so good, seriously...? 🥹 Thin-sliced pork belly gets a bit hard in texture if you grill it too long or let it sit after grilling, but the pork cheek has none of that. It's just chewy, a texture genius, and sooo!! good!!!

I put bean sprouts, onion and garlic stems in and made a wrap with the vegetables. When I took a photo of my wrap, my mom shoved hers at me saying hers is delicious too and to take a picture... hahahahaha. You can tell how satisfied my parents were. A BBQ place my parents approve of = a real good restaurant.

In the end, we ordered extra pork cheek... I'm falling in love with Daepae Maket's pork cheek.

Seafood doenjang stew and fried rice: make it yourself or order it?

The seafood doenjang stew (₩6,000) at Daepae Maket Daeyeon had a refreshing broth with a strong taste of mideodeok (sea squirt), and for fried rice you're better off ordering the ₩4,000 self-fried rice set. After the meat, I added the seafood doenjang stew and rice and fried the rice myself. The seafood flavor was strong and refreshing.

As for frying rice totally by myself (not ordering the self-fried rice set, a real DIY)...... for ₩4,000 more you can order the self-fried rice set, so order it and fry that, haha.. or do the review event..! I brought kimchi, bean sprouts and bracken from the self-bar and fried it with sesame oil, but it would have been much tastier if I'd added the self-fried rice set. There's a reason the menu item exists.

On the way out after paying, I even got ice cream, nom nom. Daepae Maket is perfect right down to dessert...

Verdict: Daepae Maket Daeyeon, now my parents' pick for work dinners

On the way out after the meal, my dad took a photo of the parking guide, saying he should bring his staff here for a company dinner. Daepae Maket Daeyeon, which even my parents were truly happy with... 😋 A pork belly spot and a meat spot, I fully agree. The whole family was very happy with both value and taste, so we've decided to come back soon!

• Taste ★★★★★
• Price ★★★★★ (best value)
• Comfort ★★★★☆ (very clean and pleasant, but a bit noisy)
• Would visit again ★★★★★