Barley duck risotto and Caesar chicken tender salad: Hey Joji

I was craving a really good risotto, so I visited Hey Joji, known for nailing American home-style cooking. I wanted to try every popular menu item, but that day I was in the mood for risotto, so I ordered the duck steak risotto. I also tried the chicken tender salad on the side.

Getting to Hey Joji

Start from the GS25 where you enter the Yeonnam-dong alley, keep going down, and when you see the alley in the photo on the right, turn in.

Keep going straight to the very end and you'll find the restaurant with the green exterior.

American home-style concept and atmosphere

True to its American home-style concept, the interior feels like an American grandmother just painted her house for spring — cozy, a little 80s-90s, that kind of comforting spoon-in-hand American dining feel, if that makes sense?

It felt like the kind of quiet Sunday morning Denny's where you'd order pancakes and coffee instead of risotto or steak, and where you'd expect to see lots of grandmas and grandpas hahaha. This particular seating area especially had that vibe.

Maybe that's why there were so many couples there on dates.

Hey Joji's full menu

Here's the full menu. They have wine by the bottle too, which seems great for couples. I was especially curious about the orange wine — what would that taste like? They also had house wine and beer, plus a wide range from pasta to risotto, steak, fries, and salads, and I spotted waffle chicken on there. If I get the chance to come back, I'll have to order the waffle chicken and sweet potato fries next time haha.

Duck steak risotto, with the pop of barley

I was picturing sliced smoked duck for the duck steak risotto, but what arrived was a whole smoked duck seared like a steak and cut into thick pieces. Both the plate underneath and various spots on the dish had 'Hey Joji' printed on them, and the design was so nice I would've bought it separately if they sold it. Even the yellow plate underneath was a house-only plate with the Hey Joji name on it.

Because it wasn't thin sliced duck but a thick smoked duck steak, it tasted even better. And since the whole smoked duck was cooked as a generous steak portion, the risotto felt really satisfying overall.

This risotto in particular was genuinely delicious. Instead of white rice, it was made with barley that popped with each bite, which made it feel like an even more proper risotto to me.

Eating the saltily smoked duck steak together with the risotto, the combination was really great. The risotto wasn't heavy at all — it was actually soft and smooth.

I ordered mainly because I was drawn to the duck steak, but if I come back, I think I'll end up reordering just for this risotto flavor, since I won't be able to forget it. This was the first time I ever savored and chewed each grain of a risotto like it was too precious to waste.

Since it's a cream-based risotto, I ordered the salad thinking I'd eat it in between bites to balance things out, and pickles came out along with it. They really cleansed the palate. The pickles weren't overly sweet, which kept my mouth feeling fresh.

Chicken tender salad, vegetables stacked in layers with Caesar-style sauce

The salad was also different from what I expected — I figured a chicken tender salad would just be a chicken tender salad, but it was actually the presentation of the salad, more than the chicken tenders, that caught my eye.

Usually salads are piled up in a voluminous, disorderly mound, but here the vegetables were neatly stacked in layers and stood upright, which made it feel like there was even more vegetable volume — very satisfying. And unlike a mounded salad, sauce was brushed between each layer of stacked vegetables, making it richer.

As someone who tends to cut or fold my salad with a knife anyway, this style was especially easy to eat haha. The sauce felt more like Caesar than ranch to me. I like Caesar more than ranch, so that was a win for me haha.

The sauce wasn't just on the salad — it was beautifully and generously presented across the whole plate, so there was plenty of it left over for dipping the chicken tenders too.

Final thoughts

This wasn't a place that was only satisfying for the atmosphere, and it wasn't just decorated to look like an American home-style restaurant without the substance to match — the food was genuinely satisfying too. It might just become one of the places I turn to whenever I'm missing Wit N Meat haha.