Jongno Seoul Korean BBQ for frozen pork belly: Tapgol Gongwon

An outdoor Jongno meal beside a stone wall

The weather has gotten cooler lately, so it’s the perfect season for outdoor dining!! 🫧🍂 This week, I visited Tapgol Gongwon Jongno 3-ga Branch, a newly opened spot for frozen pork belly in Jongno 3-ga!

📍 Location: Pagoda Theater 1F, 111 Supyo-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 🕖 Hours: Daily 17:00–01:00

Tapgol Gongwon Jongno 3-ga Branch is tucked into an alley, and the atmosphere is honestly incredible!! In weather like this, grilling meat at an outdoor table around Jongno is basically a must, haha. Plenty of restaurants sit right on the roadside, but this one has a long stone wall along one side, so it’s great for photos. Not too many people pass by, and it has just the right amount of lively buzz—I loved it!

Basic sides grilled in the meat fat

Here are the basic side dishes! They serve seasoned bean sprouts and napa cabbage kimchi, and they’re seriously delicious when you put them on the grill with the meat fat!! Hahaha. There’s also sweet-and-tangy shredded radish, lettuce, and seasoned vegetables! Lots of sides to cut through the richness alongside the meat. Need more? You can refill them whenever you like! 👍

Even the utensil holder sits in a basket with a cute picnic-like feel, haha. It kind of feels like camping with friends~🫧

Meat choices and the Tapgol Set

Here’s the menu! There were honestly more kinds of meat than I expected!! Quick-frozen pork belly and flower pork neck are the basics, but there’s also beef brisket, beef rib meat, and beef chuck flap, so it’s easy to choose whatever suits your taste. For groups, I saw lots of people going for the good-value Tapgol Set (₩55,000), with pork belly, flower pork neck, and duck roast, haha.

A self-service bar for carefree refills

You can freely help yourself to the basic ingredients at the self-service bar without feeling awkward! The seasoned bean sprouts and napa cabbage kimchi always run out when you grill them in the meat fat, so having a separate self-service bar made refills so easy! You can keep bringing back as much seasoned scallion salad, wrap vegetables, garlic, and ssamjang (seasoned soybean paste dip) as you want, which was great, haha.

The restroom is inside the restaurant too, which was convenient—you don’t have to go far.

Quick-frozen pork belly, pork neck, and pork kimchi stew

• Quick-frozen pork belly ₩18,000
• Quick-frozen pork neck ₩19,000
• Pork kimchi stew ₩9,000

Unlike typical frozen pork belly that can be overly fatty, this pork belly had just the right balance of lean meat and fat, so it stayed savory rather than dry even when grilled crisp!! The pork neck had its characteristic clean flavor with none of that dry texture, and it was tender to chew. It’s lower in fat and gets nuttier the more you chew, so I recommend it to anyone who likes clean, light flavors!

The meat comes in thin slices, so it cooks quickly as soon as it hits the grill. Even when you’re eating outside in the breeze, it stays warm! ✨ Along with the ssamjang and salt that bring out the meat’s natural savory flavor, adding a little green onion kimchi or garlic keeps every bite clean rather than greasy.

When the meat starts to feel a little rich, one spoonful of this really settles your stomach—it has the spicy, deep broth flavor unique to well-simmered aged kimchi!!! The broth is thick and rich, making it perfect to mix with a bowl of rice or spoon up between drinks. Such a good meal-and-drinking-snack dish, haha.

Tables made for lingering over drinks

If you want to relax with that outdoor-table vibe around Jongno 3-ga, Tapgol Gongwon Jongno 3-ga Branch is somewhere I absolutely want to recommend! The charm of this kind of stone wall is so rare these days, and the retro alley atmosphere makes it feel like you’ve time-traveled to old Jongno—such a different experience, haha.

Plus, the outdoor tables aren’t packed too tightly together, so even amid the bustle, it was perfect for quietly chatting among ourselves and raising a glass✨ If you’re looking around Jongno for a pocha (Korean street-food pub) or Korean barbecue restaurant that has both atmosphere and flavor, be sure to stop by!