Sagyejeol Heukyeomso

It is all too easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to Korean food. For anyone looking to explore the lesser-known areas of Korean cuisine, Sagyejeol Heukyeomso is a good place to start. Featuring a menu built around goat meat, this is the perfect place to escape the ordinary and try something new.

Atmosphere and Service

Sagyejeol Heukyeomso looks just like a million other Korean restaurants with its wooden interior and long, low tables. On a slow day, the owners may be relaxing on floor mats and watching kickboxing on TV, but do not let that turn you away. The service was fast and friendly, with special care taken to explain how to use some of the out-of-the-ordinary condiments to season the soup at the table.

Food

If it is not obvious from the restaurant’s outer décor, with pictures of black goats roaming around freely on green hills, this is the place to go for all things goat. The menu offers goat meat prepared three ways. The first of these is heukyeomso yangtang, or goat stew. Also available are heukyeomso sooyook, which is long strips of goat meat steamed at the table on a bed of green onions, and heukyeomso jeongol, a large hotpot filled with meat, broth and an assortment of vegetables.

The stew came with the usual assortment of sides of kimchi and radishes. After bringing out the bowls of stew, our server directed our attention to two unknown condiments on the table. The first was a red bottle that contained a red pepper sauce similar to gochujang, but a little thinner and not quite as spicy. The other was a small jar of brown powder that seemed to be ground perilla seeds. The idea is to squirt some of the pepper sauce into a small side dish and then flavor the sauce to taste using the perilla powder. This is then used as a dipping sauce for the meat from the soup.

The stew itself was delicious and perfect for a cool day. The thick, dark broth seemed to be seasoned heavily with more of the perilla powder and contained large amounts of green onions. Digging into the soup with chopsticks revealed large chunks of incredibly tender goat meat. Goat meat usually has a reputation for being very gamey, but the meat here just seemed to absorb the flavor of the broth.

As a harder-to-find dish, goat meat is a little pricier than other options. The stew costs 13,000 won per serving. The steamed and hotpot preparations come priced at a level that makes them better to try as a group. Both cost 45,000 won for a small order and 65,000 won for a large.

Directions

Address: 광주광역시 광산구 장덕동 1437번지/ (1437 Jangdeok-dong Gwangsan-gu, Gwangju)

Tel: 062-962-9993

Hours: Daily 11:00 AM – 9:30 PM (closed on the fourth Sunday of every month)

Bus: 11, 49, 72, 196 (Jangdeok Village Stop). You should see restaurants and small stores on your right, with some houses to your left across the street. Walk straight until you reach the major four-way intersection. Turn right here and walk for about three minutes into a strip of several restaurants. Sagyejeol Heukyeomso is at the end of a short street behind a Naju Gomtang restaurant, near the end of the strip.