Yakitori bar by Pohang Railroad Forest: tokkuri sake pairing at Yomo

Why Yomo for dinner after a Pohang Railroad Forest walk?

Yomo (요모) in Pohang is a yakitori izakaya (Japanese-style pub) a 3-minute walk from the middle of Pohang Railroad Forest. After walking the Railroad Forest I was hungry and wanted tasty snacks with a cold beer. The izakaya is famous in Daegu and has become a go-to spot near the Railroad Forest too, so I picked it for dinner right away.

• Address: 3 Yanghakcheon-ro, 1st floor, Buk-gu, Pohang, Gyeongbuk, South Korea
• 3-minute walk from the middle of Pohang Railroad Forest
• Hours: 17:00 to 01:00 the next day, last order at 00:00
• Closed every Sunday

What are the atmosphere and seating like at Yomo Pohang?

The exterior is the same as the Daegu branch: warm, stylish, with a Japanese izakaya feel. I asked, and Daegu is the original shop while the Pohang one is a branch.

What's different is that the inside is definitely bigger. There are bar seats, tables and an inner floor-seating area, so the layout is varied and it holds lots of people. They warned us that the bar seats get quite smoky, and most groups were seated at tables.

Table seats are limited, so many people come with a reservation. On weekends, expect a wait for sure. There are floor tables where you take off your shoes, which is nice for company dinners and gatherings.

Yomo's menu and what we ordered

As a yakitori specialist, Yomo has a wide range of skewers and side dishes that go well with them. We picked tsukune (chicken meatball skewer) and lagom soba, Yomo's signatures that others also raved about, plus chicken skin and thigh skewers as extras. I think it was a good ratio: some to fill us up like a meal, some as drinking snacks.

For drinks, we tried a cold draft beer to wash away the tiredness of work, tokkuri (a flask of sake) to bring out the flavor of the skewers, and a glass pour too. By the way!! If you visit before 6pm, they give 1 large draft beer or 2 small bite-size drafts for free. I'd guess it's weekdays only... but I'm not sure about weekends.

Yomo's events also give you a highball or a glass of sake, and the Asahi draft beer set is a great set for drinking solo. There's also a sake of the month event selling good sake cheaply.

This is what we ordered first, and we added more later. Ordering at Yomo isn't by kiosk; you write it down on paper and hand it in.

These are the default cabbage salad, wasabi and whole-grain mustard sauce. The angry rabbit side plate is so cute, right? haha There are also two sauces to sprinkle on and an hourglass.

How do Yomo's tokkuri sake and Asahi draft beer taste?

The drinks came out first, so we had a cold glass of tokkuri each. It was a 13.5% sake. The alcohol taste wasn't strong, and it was clean and smooth, which suits me. I like it when you can't taste the alcohol much, haha.

And of course the draft beer couldn't be skipped, so I gulped it down right away. They serve the glass cold, and maybe because Asahi draft is so popular, it was sweet and tasty. Draft beer really is perfect for quenching thirst as you drink.

The lagom soba came out first, then the chicken skin yakitori. I wanted to take a photo with everything out at once, but yakitori tends to come out in sequence, and the staff told us to eat the skin first, so we ate in the order it arrived.

Lagom soba, Yomo's signature dish

When they brought the lagom soba, they told us to break the poached egg, mix it with the noodles and eat it with the seaweed. The poached egg was really fresh. I could see into the kitchen, and they cook with lots of eggs stacked up. The lagom soba sauce also had mushrooms and bacon in it.

At the first bite, the thick, umami-rich sauce stood out first. It was a bit creamier than rosé pasta, and the noodles were chewy. The sauce itself was tasty and the portion was fair, so I thought the price was reasonable.

I also wrapped it in the seaweed, but I preferred it plain. I could see why it's the signature of a Railroad Forest favorite.

Chicken skin yakitori (2 pieces): crispy and chewy

The first yakitori to arrive at Yomo was the chicken skin.

If the skin is too thin, it just tastes like fried food, but Yomo's skin yakitori keeps the crispness while still having a chewy texture. I was surprised at how fast it vanished. I meant to eat slowly, but it disappeared in a blink.

Thigh yakitori, or thigh with scallion?

Yomo has both a thigh-and-scallion yakitori and a plain thigh yakitori, and I hesitated, but I'm a meat person, so I ordered the all-meat thigh yakitori.

Each piece of the thigh yakitori was plump. As plump as it was, it was juicy inside, with a nicely golden char flavor. Put a bit of wasabi and whole-grain mustard sauce on it... the best combination.

3-minute hourglass tsukune: be sure to ask for a spoon

When they bring out Yomo's tsukune, they say it's tastiest eaten within 3 minutes and flip the hourglass for you. So you rush to break the poached egg and dip.

The tsukune was a hamburg-steak-shaped yakitori made of minced meat pressed together and grilled. The meat mixture had a good stickiness and it was so juicy.. full of juice inside. It's chicken, and they raised the flavor this much?! You can feel the skill of a Railroad Forest favorite. The outer crust was really nutty and tasty.

Eating the tsukune with tokkuri was a good match, since it wiped the grease away. Oh, and I recommend asking for a spoon when you eat tsukune. If you want to eat it with the egg, scooping works better.

Finishing with a glass of Jokigen yuzushu

After finishing the tokkuri, we added beer and a glass pour. I ordered the Chokigen yuzu sake (Chokigen Yuzushu) by the glass, and they served it in a cup with ice floating in it. It was a sweet glass pour, easy to drink as a finish.

Is Yomo Pohang worth a return visit?

Drinks pairing, yakitori and interior: that's the three-beat combo, plus no misses whichever dish you order, which seems to be Yomo Pohang's secret. So I think there's a wait on weekend evenings. It was packed with people when we left too.

It's a Railroad Forest izakaya that's good for solo drinking at the bar and for enjoying with a group. It's the perfect course: walk the Railroad Forest, then go for a drink.