I had originally wanted to take AngryRussian to Hee Rae Dang for his first non-Korean-BBQ-Korean dinner experience. However it was just our luck
that Hee Rae Dang was closed for renovations until- get this- the next day, so we kind of just walked around the area where Insadong is located and then I settled on Busan Daeji Gukbap.
It seemed like the perfect night for Busan Daeji Gukbap though, as they are a restaurant specializing in pork broth, and it was a rainy, slightly chilly night. AngryRussian searched for a review and only found one, and he was quite the trooper to go ahead and try this with me.
I wanted AngryRussian’s Korean experience to start off strong so I suggested that he try the Pork bone soup (small for $11.99, served with rice) which is a spicy soup with pork bone. As it turns out he had that in mind too. Great minds think alike I guess =)
The broth was delicious and very hearty with plenty of pork bone rib meat to pick off. It does have quite the noticeable spicy kick to me; AngryRussian was doing well though as he is a fan of spicy food. I was extremely proud of AngryRussian’s efforts with the chopsticks/rib bone meat battle despite my incessant teasing. He finished off everything so I think he liked it.
I decided on the Korean sausage soup ($11.99) which is a white pork soup, with sundae (Korean blood sausage) and “pork guts”. This was served with rice also.
The broth here is unsalted, so you are given a container of salt and other red sauces to flavor to your liking. It also came with a container of black seed-like grains for you to add to the broth.
The broth was very hearty also. Viscous and fatty and very flavorful. The menu states that you only get three pieces of sundae but I actually got about fives slices. As for the “pork guts”, I found ear, stomach, belly, and small intestine. I couldn’t finish the whole bowl as like I stated before it is quite fatty and chocked full of organ meats, so I packed the rest to go.
We also got an order of Fried Dumplings with Spicy Vegetable ($11.99). The dumplings were bigger than your typical Korean dumplings, and actually had quite a bit of meat inside along with some chives. They were delicious with the soy dipping sauce.
The spicy vegetable mix was a crunchy combination of large bean sprouts, carrots and cucumber in a sour-ish spicy sauce. Not exactly like kimchi flavor. It was really good with the dumplings.
I think this Korean experience was a success and I actually really liked the food here. I would love to return once again when it’s colder outside and try their other offerings.
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