72-hour aged knife-cut pork belly near Suwon City Hall: Dojeok Suwon

Inge-dong has so many pork belly restaurants that it's hard to decide where to go, but I visited Dojeok Suwon with high expectations since it's a 20-year-old knife-cut pork belly specialist.

Location and parking

Dojeok Suwon, a well-known pork belly spot in Inge-dong, Suwon, is a 7-minute walk from Exit 9 of Suwon City Hall Station, right on the Inge-dong strip. Park at Castle Tower next door and you get a generous 4 free hours, so driving there isn't much of a hassle either.

Interior and layout

The thing I worry about most at a pork belly place is coming out smelling like smoke, but the ventilation over every table here was really good, so I felt much less of that typical BBQ-restaurant smoke and smell. The space itself is spacious too, which seems great for people in Inge-dong looking for a spot for a company dinner or group gathering.

Menu and table setting

True to being a pork belly specialist, the menu is laser-focused on the meat, with a few simple dessert-style items too. I tried the restaurant's signature dish today — knife-cut pork belly!

The side dishes that come standard with the meat order were pretty generous too. They gave us kimchi and potatoes to grill together on the pan, plus plenty of fresh vegetables like scallion shreds and ssam greens.

They also include a house-made doenjang jjigae (soybean paste stew) as standard! A bite of meat, a bit of side dish, more meat, then a spoonful of doenjang jjigae — yeah, no Korean meal is complete without doenjang jjigae alongside the meat, haha.

Knife-cut pork belly, ₩16,000

Knife-cut pork belly — ₩16,000

At Dojeok Suwon, the meat goes through 200 knife scores and 72 hours of aging before it's ready. Among Inge-dong pork belly restaurants, this place really stood out for how much attention they put into trimming and aging the meat. With the pork belly scored so densely, even the surface looked different from regular pork belly once it was cooked.

This was the dish I was most excited for, since it's Dojeok's signature menu! The meat comes out pre-grilled once, then a staff member cuts it into bite-sized pieces right at the table — you could see the juices on the cut surface, and it looked incredibly good just from that. Not having to worry about grilling the meat yourself and just being able to relax and talk turned out to be a surprisingly big plus for a gathering or a date.

Pork belly gets dry fast if you grill it too hard, but since it was already pre-grilled, we just finished it off lightly and the juices stayed intact — really tasty. The flavor came through especially well between all those knife scores, so it was great even just dipped in salt! Most people who love pork belly seem to prefer this thick, juicy style, so personally, if you're coming to Inge-dong for pork belly, I think the knife-cut pork belly is worth trying at least once.

Staff kept placing pieces of meat on our plate one at a time, and once the meat was mostly cooked, they separated it out like this, which made things really convenient.

They gave us plenty of ssam vegetables too, so it was fun wrapping the meat with kimchi, scallion shreds, garlic and sauce to your own taste.

Good for a company dinner or group gathering?

And for dessert, the classic Korean BBQ-restaurant milk coffee machine! :) Whenever I go to a pork belly place, I find it kind of a hassle constantly flipping the meat and worrying about it burning, but Dojeok Suwon definitely made that part easier. Inge-dong has a lot of offices nearby, so plenty of people come here for company dinners or group meetups, and it seems like a comfortable spot even for a larger group.