Korean BBQ for 5 in Jeongwang-dong: beef set plus cubed pork, Samstar

Where is Samstar Charcoal Grill, and where do you park?

Samstar Charcoal Grill (삼스타숯불구이) is in Jeongwang-dong, near the Yojin Apartments in Block 46. From Oido Station, take bus 99-2 or 23.

This is the storefront, and it looked like it hadn't been open long. If you're driving, you can park free for 2 hours at the Sihwa parking lot behind the building.

Inside Samstar on a Saturday evening

The inside has 4-person tables, plus 4 more sofa tables that aren't in the photo. Three part-time staff took turns looking after us, and when we went around 8pm on Saturday, we were only the third table. I wondered for a moment why it was so empty.

First, there's a wide variety of sauces. And unlike other places, they give you lots of small plates, and if you run short you can grab more next to the self-serve bar. At other BBQ places you keep having to call the staff, which is a hassle, so being able to use them without feeling awkward is a big plus.

Side dishes and rice at Samstar

The side dishes were all really good. Just having myeongi namul (pickled wild greens) at a BBQ place made me think, okay, this place knows what it's doing. The green onion kimchi and aged kimchi were perfect with the meat. With two spicy and two tangy options, the meal never got greasy.

We usually have a set amount of rice we order, and we went way, way over it. The rice was so good that we ordered double our usual. Officially a rice-lover's spot.

How many people does the Samstar set feed?

This is the menu. The Samstar set fills two people. If they're women, you'd need three. It's 500g of meat plus makguksu (buckwheat noodles) and doenjang (soybean paste) soup, so it's a lot of food.

Half-and-half beef short rib: plain and marinated galbi

First of the half-and-half beef short rib: the plain galbi. Other beef short ribs tend to be chewy, but the beef short rib at Samstar was tender.

Second, the marinated galbi was even more tender than the plain one. It felt like eating skirt steak. Personally I didn't notice any gamey smell, and at this price for this quality, I thought it's a place I'd go back to. In Jeongwang, ₩16,000 a serving counts as expensive meat, but the taste matches the price. Unless you're after the cheap stuff, this place is good!

Be sure to grill the mushrooms that come with it

Mushrooms come with the meal too, and I really want everyone to know how good those mushrooms are when grilled. Let me share a little recipe: slice them thin, put them in an air fryer, drizzle with olive oil and cook. They should look soft and wilted, like "I'm all limp~" If they still look like "I'm a mushroom," they're not good. It's a dish I make special even though I don't normally eat mushrooms. Please give it a try..

Anyway, these felt like that kind of mushroom, so I ate them happily at the restaurant. (This is a recommendation from a host who doesn't eat mushrooms out, so trust me and try them.)

Adding pork belly and cubed pork: do you get a separate grill?

We ordered 170g of pork belly and 170g of cubed pork (kkakdugi deotsal) on top. At Samstar, unlike the beef, pork gets a separate grill. You can't grill beef and pork together!! But that actually kept the flavors from mixing, so everything tasted cleaner.

The cubed pork is what you see in the photo, and the pork belly is on the grill. The pork belly here is fatty, about half fat. It's not my taste so I wasn't going to eat it (I'm totally a pork neck person), but I tried one and it was better than expected, so I ate it with cold noodles and ended up feeling bloated ;; If you're having pork belly, I recommend grilling the garlic from the self-serve bar too.

Crab doenjang soup or regular: you can choose

The doenjang soup has lots of tofu in it. Samstar's soup bowl is bigger than other places. If others are 12–13cm across, this one is maybe 15–17cm?

This was the fresh crab doenjang soup. At BBQ places I usually get the regular meat doenjang soup, but at Samstar you can choose regular or crab. It was so refreshing and rich that it was a joy to eat! I think I even ate more rice thanks to it.

Choose the perilla oil makguksu for your set noodles

The makguksu is the kick at Samstar. With the set menu you can pick mul naengmyeon (cold broth noodles), bibim naengmyeon (spicy mixed noodles) or makguksu. I tried the mul naengmyeon and the makguksu, and I'm telling you, order the makguksu.

The mul naengmyeon was fine too. But they give you disposable packets of mustard and vinegar, and the mustard tasted like sweet yellow mustard, which was really bad. Wasabi comes out with the side dishes, so use that instead of the mustard.

If I went again, this is the combo I'd order

If I went again, as someone who likes clean, light flavors, I'd order marinated galbi + crab doenjang soup + makguksu. I hear you can swap in skirt steak for +₩12,000 on the set, and that would probably be a good try too. Overall, the meat was good.

Downsides of Samstar Charcoal Grill

• The ventilation didn't seem as good as I expected.
• There's no bin at each table, so trash was an issue.
• There were five of us, and they added a single chair to a 4-person table. It would have been better if they'd seated us at a 6-person table. Maybe they don't have one.. in that case, I wish they'd push 2-person tables together so 5–6 people can sit.
• Even though it wasn't busy, the part-timers didn't quickly come to clear unneeded dishes, so we ended up putting things like the water bottle on the sofa..
• Don't put the disposable mustard sauce in your naengmyeon. It was so sweet I wanted to throw the noodles away.. Use wasabi!!!!

They looked like part-timers rather than regular staff (they looked very young), so of course I understand they may be inexperienced with that stuff. That's exactly why it would be nice to have bins and tables that fit the party size.

What I still liked about Samstar Charcoal Grill

Other than that, the myeongi namul is tasty, the meat is tasty, the rice is really good, the staff are kind, they ask things like "Shall I take this away for you?", they happily turned down the music when I asked, there's parking.. the place is clean and they keep refilling the self-serve bar. It seemed newly opened, and I thought it deserves to be more popular!!

Meat is good at every place, so setting that aside, if you want to enjoy perilla oil makguksu and doenjang stew even more, I highly recommend Samstar Charcoal Grill in Jeongwang-dong!!