Late-night shabu-shabu buffet in Yeosu: Tongkeun Shabu

Our Yeosu travel accommodation was near City Hall, so I searched for good restaurants around Yeosu City Hall and Tongkeun Shabu came up first—so we went!

Yeosu City Hall shabu-shabu that was great for a late dinner

It is open daily from 11:30 AM to 10:00 PM, with last orders at 8:30 PM. You can park inside the building or in the dedicated lot across the street, and high chairs are available too.

Finding a Yeosu restaurant at nearly 8 PM was not easy. Someone asked, “Who goes all the way to Yeosu to eat shabu-shabu?” But with a young child, our menu choices were limited, and heavy traffic had thrown our schedule off, so dinner got late. I was surprised that, despite being a tourist destination, most places in Yeosu closed early. I thought we might not get to eat at all, but Tongkeun Shabu solved all of that for us. I loved that it stayed open until 10 PM!

Tongkeun Shabu all-you-can-eat prices

For the all-you-can-eat option, lunch is ₩23,900 and dinner is ₩26,900. Elementary school students (ages 8–13) are ₩14,000, while preschool children (ages 5–7) are ₩11,000.

Once seated, they brought us a broth menu. Normally I would have chosen mala broth, but since this was a meal with family, I went with the safe, basic broth!

A varied self-serve bar, from vegetables to sushi

The restaurant was clean and spaciously laid out. As you would expect from a shabu-shabu restaurant, the tables were wide too, so we could eat comfortably.

The shabu-shabu vegetables were fresh as well. There were napa cabbage, bean sprouts, mushrooms, dumplings, fish balls, and kalguksu (knife-cut noodles), plus prepared perilla leaves, carrots, cucumbers, fruit cocktail, and more vegetables for making Vietnamese-style wraps.

The salad bar was full of delicious food too. There was fried chicken, tangsuyuk (sweet-and-sour fried meat), pork ribs, chicken feet, mala stir-fried noodles, cream spaghetti, smoked duck, and more, so it was fun choosing what to try. The salads were generous, and the fruit was tasty too 😋

They even had sushi! I loved it.

You can choose between two types of meat.

They were pork shoulder and woosamgyeop (thinly sliced beef belly), and both were tender rather than chewy.

There was pizza too, along with rice, eggs, and other ingredients so you could make juk (rice porridge).

Unlike other places, they had naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles)! This was such a special treat, so definitely make yourself a bowl. Every other table seemed to have one too!

There were three kinds of sauce, so you can put your preferred ones into a sauce dish.

They also had soda, pomegranate juice, and maesil (Korean plum) juice. Free soda! Such a great service.

Use the bowls prepared at the table to bring back vegetables and meat! Plates for salad are underneath the counter where the salad is laid out.

I was eating so busily that this is the only photo I got of the self-serve bar, haha. The fried chicken was delicious too! They checked and maintained both the bar and the food constantly, so it was incredibly clean. The moment something ran out or got spilled, someone seemed to come running from nowhere to tidy it right up!

There is a ₩5,000 environmental fee for leftover food, so take only as much as you can eat and do not leave any behind.

Loads of vegetables and meat in the basic broth

While we were bringing back and eating this and that from the salad bar, the broth began to boil. We put the vegetables we had brought into the pot and cooked them together.

I added plenty of napa cabbage and bean sprouts, along with mushrooms I love.

Then in went lots of meat! It tastes better when you add plenty. It started bubbling away! Since the vegetables and meat only need a light cook, we started eating once they had cooked just a little more.

I dipped the meat right into the spicy chili soy sauce.

So delicious!

The meat was tender and the vegetables crisp—so tasty! I dipped vegetables and meat into the sauce, took huge bites, and ate away without stopping! Haha.

We finished with ice cream for dessert. The cool, sweet ice cream was tasty too! Shabu-shabu is delicious whenever you have it, and being all-you-can-eat makes it easier on the budget; I think it is also a menu children eat well. We had an incredibly full and happy meal at Tongkeun Shabu.