Korean BBQ: My First Experience - Steaks, cheese and lettuce wraps!

Korean BBQ in China

Korean BBQ is pretty popular among my friends and I have been seeing a lot of videos about it on youtube. I never tried it before in the US and my part of China is a bit lacking as well. I'v had a lot of Chinese style korean bbq buffets which are awesome but they are quite different to what everyone would consider authentic Korean BBQ. Unlike authentic korean bbq you cook your food on a giant hot plate and most of the meats are marinated in Chinese style sauces. One of the biggest differences though is the quality of meats. When you go to these Chinese style korean bbq's they really lack on nice quality thick cut meats.

My brother came to Chengdu for a visit a couple months ago and we were determined to go check out one of the more authentic Korean BBQ's we could find here but we just never got around to it. Luckily, my good friend @takoyakiking called me up last sunday night and let me know we were going to try a friends recommended Korean BBQ's for dinner!

It was a weekend, the restaurant was packed but luckily we didn't have to wait too long. We sat down at a table with a large ventilation unit above the table. The table itself was round with a pit in the middle filled with charcoal or coal. The table had a lot of mini side dishes already laid out. Around the actual grill area were 3 sections filled with different things. One little section was dedicated to holding cooked meat waiting to be eaten. One section was filled with cheese and corn. One section was filled egg which slowly cooked up.

The Appetizers

There was a simple salad comprised of just a few greens lightly doused in a flavorful vinaigrette. The salad may have been simple but the vinaigrette was good quality and really brought the salad together. In another dish was the well known Kimchi, which is pickled vegetables such as cabbage in a spicy korean sauce. I love kimchi and pickled vegetables but I'v had a few in the past that weren't very good at all. This restaurants kimchi was great and that is a great sign if you're eating at a Korean restaurant! In front of each person were 3 little bowls; one with salt, one with a slightly sour korean red sauce, and one with what seemed like a spicy vinaigrette & wasabi.

My favorite of the little side dishes was an egg & potato like pancake. In Chinese i'd just call it a 饼 (bing) which means some kind of flat bread/pancake like thing. It was really good and had the perfect ratio of potato to egg. I especially loved dipping it into the spicy vinaigrette sauce. There were also skewered rice cakes in another type of sweet korean red sauce.

We had a pan of vegetables we could roast on the grill as well as this amazing seaweed soup. The seaweed soup must have been mixed with a little white vinegar as well because it had that familiar taste but it was very pleasant to drink and not to overpowering. My friend who is half Japanese likened it to that of a Japanese Miso, I'v personally never had miso though so I can't comment on that.

The best thing about these little pre-dinner snacks though were that they were unlimited! I probably ordered about 4-5 of those potato pancakes!

The Menu

Being my first time at a Korean BBQ I just went with what my friends said was good. The menu had a decent amount of choices, although I didn't think it was a crazy lot. The prices were pretty steep for food in Chengdu as well with some of the beefs going over 100 CYN for a small plate. We ended up paying about 130 CYN each (20 $USD) after all was said and done which for a meal in China is very expensive, about 3x the price you'd normally pay for a group meal.

The Meats

The quality of the meats compared to the price was alright. The meats were good, pretty much what I expected for the price. Not the highest quality but also not low quality meats like you get at a lot of the Chinese stye bbqs. We ordered marinated steak, marinated beef belly and marinated pork chop. There were a lot of different cuts like ribs as well as some octopus and cow tongue. In addition to our meats we also ordered a side of spicy ramen that came in a really rich and flavorful broth!

This is our pork chop that has been cut into pieces by a worker so that we can all get some little pieces of it.

When the pork chop was finished cooking it was pushed into the side area of the cooking area and the grill rack was completely replaced with a new one to cook the next meat.

It was time for the marinated steak and it was really good! The worker asked us how we wanted it cooked and we told them medium rare! It was cooked perfectly with a nice red inside. The steak was juicy and very tender!

This was the beef belly. I'm not sure if i'm translating that correct but it's nothing scary, it's basically just a fatty piece of meat from the belly. You're probably more accustomed with pork belly, aka bacon. The flavor was really really good because of all the fat! The fat itself was like butter and melted together with the beef when you threw it in your mouth.

The Wraps

I was most excited for the lettuce style wraps. We had a plate full of just plain lettuce as well as several different condiments to dip our meats and use to fill our lettuce. I tried several different types buy my favorite were these. One was the pork chop dipped in the various dipping sauces and then mixed together with spicy saucy bean sprouts. My absolute favorite was the marinated steak mixed with cheese and corn. All the flavors from the various dipping sauces and the sweet flavor of the corn created an amazing combination of textures and flavors.

The restaurant was good and I enjoyed the food a lot. I'm glad I was finally able to experience a Korean BBQ and i'll definately be trying more in the future. I'm not sure how authenticate the BBQ was but it seemed pretty authentic and my friends though so too. If you've had real Korean BBQ before let me know if you think it is authentic or not!

Funny picture of hanging napkins. Even though it looks funny hanging from the ceiling it was pretty convenient as it didn't take up space on an already busy table.