Daebang pub for weekend daytime beer: soy sauce chicken, Yukhaegong

Weekend daytime beer near Daebang Station: why Yukhaegong?

On an autumn weekend afternoon, we had chicken and fries with beer at Yukhaegong Banban Tteokbokki & Chicken Beer Main Branch (육해공 반반 떡볶이&치킨맥주 본점) near Daebang Station. I suddenly craved a beer place in the middle of a weekend day. On nice autumn days, spots for daytime drinking just keep popping into my head.

At first I wanted tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes) with grilled chicken, but then fried chicken started calling my name too. So I ordered chicken and fries. We just dropped in casually, but there were so many tasty things on the menu that I agonized forever before ordering, haha. I'll cover the place, the menu and my review!

What is the atmosphere like at Yukhaegong?

The main branch is very spacious inside. What you see in the photos isn't even all of it, and still lots of delivery and pickup orders were coming in.

We went in the daytime, so delivery and pickup were busy, and since it was a weekend afternoon, people like me who wanted a leisurely daytime beer kept coming in one after another.

A pub where half-and-half tteokbokki is the main act

At Yukhaegong, the main dish is half-and-half tteokbokki rather than chicken or grilled chicken! But tteokbokki with chicken is the ultimate combo, right? So I loved that they have both.

The best part is that you can get your tteokbokki half and half. Hotpot, shabu-shabu, even jjajangmyeon (black bean noodles) and jjamppong (spicy seafood noodles) all come half and half, and come to think of it, tteokbokki never does. So everyone always has to decide together whether it's rosé, black bean or original today, and even at Dookki, the queen of made-to-order tteokbokki, there's no half and half, so we always had to settle on one sauce. Half-and-half tteokbokki is such a needed idea that I wondered why nobody thought of it before, haha.

Location, parking and how to find it

The main branch is in an arcade inside an apartment complex, so there's parking, and residents wander in so casually, haha.

Come down to basement level 1 of the building and you'll find it easily.

Hours and the daytime beer discount

I was told that if you visit around lunchtime, beer is ₩1,000 off before 4 p.m. It's open from 11:20 a.m. to 2 a.m., so it works for a weekday after work or a weekend of daytime beer and relaxing.

Yukhaegong menu overview

The menu starts with tteokbokki and half-and-half tteokbokki, then chicken, assorted grilled chicken, chicken feet, udon, soup and stew dishes, fried sides, dried snacks and fries, sausages and dumplings, noodles like Chapaghetti, sundae (blood sausage), and even sherbet. Every kind of pub food plus cold sherbet to refresh your mouth after drinking, which was perfect.

The free snack, puffed corn (gangnaengi), is available at a self-serve bar.

The chicken and fries came out fairly quickly. They fry to order, so everything was very crispy and hot. I was especially happy that the chicken has a crispy, not-too-thick batter.

How big is the order of fries?

I ordered the fries thinking of them as a side, and was surprised by how much came. There were three of us, and one person loved the fries so much they ate over half and got too full to touch the chicken. One order is really a lot.

The fries come with ketchup, and the wedge potatoes were especially mild and tasty, going well with the ketchup.

I assumed the other kind was plain fries, but they had a mild Cajun seasoning, like the fries at Momstouch. So we dipped the wedges in ketchup and ate the fries plain, which gave us two different flavors, and I liked that.

Soy sauce chicken and fried chicken: how did they taste?

We chose the soy sauce chicken at Yukhaegong. I was curious about something that isn't seasoned (yangnyeom) or plain fried, but I also wanted to try the classic fried chicken, and since it wasn't the busy dinner rush, I asked if a few pieces could be fried style. So I'll review the fried chicken too!

Soy sauce chicken: salty over sweet, perfect with beer

The chicken was fried so well that even the drier white meat wasn't dry, and the salty soy flavor went really well with the thin, crispy batter. It leans salty rather than sweet, so it never got boring, and it truly paired well with beer.

Fried chicken: strongly brined and salty

The fried chicken made me say, wow, this is good! Without soy sauce you can taste the brine, and it's a salty, strongly brined style, so it goes great with beer even on its own!