Hongdae Dakgalbi

I first saw that Hongdae Dakgalbi was opening in the former location of Nice 2 Meet U back in November. I then read that this was to be the first US location of the Seoul based chain. Which was quite interesting. Recently, the Missus wanted to try a new place and Hongdae came to mind. So, we drove on over for an early dinner.

This being the parking lot where CoCo Ichibanya, Paik’s Noodle, and Taste of Hong Kong is located….the parking lot can be a horror show, which is why we headed on over early.

The restaurant is quite large…very spacious. There was one gentleman working the front of house who was quite nice. As the place got busier, he had his hands full as he helped all customers cook their dishes.

Looking over the menu…well, we’d be getting the dakgalbi for sure, choosing the “Fire Dakgalbi” spice level 2 ($29) and also the Gopchang Dakglabi ($37) which features beef intestines along with the original dakgalbi. You need to order a minimum of two items if ordering from this part of the menu. We also got the Gamja-jeon (potato pancake – $12) and of course the fried rice ($7) to finish.

After a short wait, the panchan arrived. The baechu (napa cabbage) kimchi was pretty good; mild fermented tones. The Oi (cucumber) version was kind of weak, but the thin slices of daikon was nice….not overly sweet and refreshing.

The Missus also enjoyed the typical soy sauce based salad dressing for the lettuce as well.

A few minutes later the cold radish and apple soup arrived. Not overly sweet, this was not bad either.

After this is was almost a half hour wait for our main courses. The portion size looked huge; but taking a look and there was a ton of cabbage.

Some slices of potato and carrots. The chicken was raw and just coated with sauce, basically just gochujang, not marinated. The gopchang was the only thing cooked….so the really hard working guy had to mix and get things started. We then kept mixing every few minutes. It took about 20 minutes to cook.

There didn’t seem to be enough sauce of the whole dish.

But we kept trying. We did notice some Tteokbokki (rice cakes) as we stirred things about. The gentleman arrived with some lettuce leaves and Doenjang, bean paste.

So, we had our first taste and…sigh…..man, this was so one dimensional. Yes, it had good spice; but was lacking in just about everything else. No savory; other the the gopchang, for once I actually thought about requesting some salt. How often does that happen? No sweetness, no pungent flavors…..nada. In fact, we took the doenjang and poured it in. Same with the kimchi….we did this on the sly so the guy wouldn’t bust us as he came by every few minutes to check in. We kept getting refills of kimchi to add to the iron plate. And even asked for two little dishes of doenjang which we quietly added to the dish. Basically to no avail.

Right when we decided to ask for the fried rice; the Potaot Pancake arrived.

Well, think of it as greasy, thin hash browns. It lacked the slight chewiness inside and as mentioned above, was kinda greasy. Really bland without the sauce.

The best item was the fried rice, which had a good amount of gochujang, and the nori added a savory layer.

It crusted up decently and at least had flavor.

We had a ton of leftovers….which the Missus refused to eat until after I added a ton of fermented kimchi and even Spam! The portion size looked large, but it was mostly cabbage. The flavor was very one dimensional. Also, things moved quite slowly as dinner took 2 hours!

In the end, this was a one-and-done for us. If you check out Hongdae, I hope you have better luck than we did!