Early dinner cypress steam and rice-paper hack at Pyeonbaek Hoegwan

I actually went to Pyeonbaek Hoegwan 🍱 before, and wow~ it's a restaurant I absolutely love because you can eat so healthily and deliciously there 🥢 Wait, there's a main branch? In Yeongjong? In Sky City? This is a must-visit place ❤️ Pyeonbaek Hoegwan Main Branch.

Location, hours, and how to get there

I just love seeing the words 'well-being all-you-can-eat' ☺️

What's the inside atmosphere like?

Wow, it's really spacious and pleasant!! Maybe because I went in around 5pm there weren't many people, but it was so clean!

And there was even a space for kids here. So I thought it'd be great for family gatherings too!

What's the salad bar like?

Checking out the salad bar and the food corner, everything was set up so neatly and beautifully. The basic set at this Yeongjong shabu-shabu spot, Pyeonbaek Hoegwan, is cypress steam + shabu-shabu + salad bar, so the shabu-shabu corner and salad bar are both set up 🙂

The vegetables were really fresh 🥬 The variety is basic, but still arranged beautifully and generously 🥗

Ooh, there was even spaghetti so I had a little — and it was actually good?🍝

Of course there's rice, egg, and seaweed flakes for making porridge too~

For the rice-paper rolls, you just place everything into these bowls labeled with 6 kinds of vegetables hahaha. All the vegetables were clean too!! 🥬

What did I order? Beef brisket cypress steam

After about 7 minutes, a staff member opens the cypress steam pot for you — ta-da~ — and the visual was seriously wild 😆 Since it's steamed, you get to eat the meat and vegetables all moist and tender.

The beef brisket was so tender and delicious ㅠㅠ It's pure healthy food so you can feel good eating a lot 🩵

After neatly piling meat and vegetables on top,

you wrap it up nicely and dip it in the sauce, and then—

wow, maybe because it'd been a while, it was really delicious hahaha. Shabu-shabu is great as diet food, great as health food, and honestly great just eaten for the taste of it 😆 Being the main branch of this Yeongjong shabu-shabu spot Pyeonbaek Hoegwan somehow made me trust it even more! And the staff were kind too 👍

You have to keep eating rice-paper rolls nonstop — there was even a shrimp so I added that in too 🍤

There are 3 sauces so you can pick based on your taste — and there were dumplings 🥟 in the cypress steam too, and since it was steamed, they turned out completely soft like water dumplings 🙂

Pyeonbaek Hoegwan's cypress steam ⭐️ is delicious even just dipped in sauce alone. Once you finish the cypress steam, just ask them to switch you over to shabu-shabu!

There's a sign guiding you through this too, so no matter how good the cypress steam is, make sure to move on to shabu-shabu~ 🥢 (I honestly considered ordering one more round of cypress steam because it was so good haha)

Half-and-half katsuo and beef bone mala shabu-shabu

There's a staff-call button divided out like this, so don't worry 😆 The kiosk is so thoughtfully designed ⭐️

My friend and I went with the half-and-half katsuo + beef bone mala option — the red one is the mala sauce, so we could adjust it from mild to spicy exactly to our taste 🥄

For shabu-shabu you need to bring a full plate of meat and a full plate of vegetables 😮 You can tell the ingredients are totally fresh, right?⭐️

Once the broth is bubbling away, you drop in whatever ingredients you want, dip it right in the sauce, and eat — and wow~~~~ you genuinely blurt out 'this is so good' haha.

Put leftover rice paper into the broth

I had a bit of rice paper left over, so this time I put it straight into the shabu-shabu broth and scooped it up with meat right away. I wonder how many people already know this trick??

Finish it off with self-made porridge

I was thinking about ordering kalguksu (knife-cut noodles), but I ended up craving porridge more, so I brought over some rice and added egg 🥚 Wow, the sesame oil was so nicely set up too, the smell was... ohhh...... you feel like you could start the whole meal over again 😆

Rice really is the perfect ending, right 👍 My friend said she almost suggested we order another round hahahahahaha.

Final verdict

I came away truly feeling the weight of being the main branch. Cypress steam... shabu-shabu...💛