Beomgye : Yum Yum in the Basement

17th November 2012.
Beomgye, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea

Beomgye is home to one a huge shopping mall complex dominated by Kim’s Club and Lotte Department Store. The shopping complex was built only recently hence the building is rather new. For foreigners like us, an official SK Telecom branch and a Citibank branch are nearby making it a rather important place for us (besides the shopping and food).

In the basement of Beomgye’s Lotte Department Store is a Takashimaya-style food area with plenty of food stalls and restaurant selling all kinds of food and a Korean style food court that even serve Indian cuisine. One of my favourites has to be Mos Casa which serves spicy but tasty teppanyaki noodles. You simply pick your choice of noodles (we picked the Seafood Noodles – 7500 KRW) and wait for it to be served to you.

The noodles are prepared in front of you while you wait.

You witness a heap of noodles topped with plenty of beansprouts and generous amounts of seafood transformed into a delicious looking noodles served on a golden plate, complete with irresistible smoky aroma.

We also had dinner at Shanghai Best, a shabu shabu eatery. You pick your counter seat with a induction cooker in front of you and pick one of the two available sets, one is the hot-pot style shabu shabu with noodles while the other is the Korean ssambap style, in which seasoned rice are served wrapped with lettuce. In both variants, priced at 8500 KRW, thin slices of beef are served separately for you to cook in the hot pot together with some vegetables provided such as pumpkin, leek and cabbage.

I prefer the hot pot for its interactive element. And to be honest, it was quite good actually. I could easily finish the soup and during a cold weather, nothing is more satisfying than a good old hot pot. Besides Shanghai Best and Mos Casa, Snowmounteen serves rather decent kaya toasts. It is also here where I tried Menmusha, South Korea’s Menya Musashi franchise.

After meal, make your way to the rooftop garden, a relaxing little space where you could have good views of the areas around Anyang. From the rooftop garden, you could also spot Surisan.

Lotte Department Store

Get here by taking the subway to Beomgye Station. The eateries are all located in B1 of Lotte Department Store.