How to Order at a Korean BBQ Restaurant

Korean barbecue is the most fun you can have at a restaurant table and the easiest one to fumble, because the menu tells you the prices and nothing else. What to order, how much, in what order to cook it, and who does the cooking are all governed by conventions nobody writes down. Here they are.

The two-serving minimum

Most Korean barbecue restaurants will not sell a single portion of meat. The minimum order is two servings, written on Korean menus as 2인분, and it applies even if there is one of you.

One serving, 1인분, is usually somewhere around 150 to 200 grams of raw meat. Two of them is a reasonable meal for one hungry person or a light one for two, so the rule is less punitive than it looks. It exists because the grill and the accompanying spread are built around a shared table.

The practical version: order two servings of one cut to start, eat it, and order more as you go. Nobody expects the whole meal to be ordered up front, and ordering in waves is the normal rhythm.

The cuts, and which one to start with

• Samgyeopsal. Thick-cut pork belly, and the default. The name means "three-layer meat," for the alternating bands of fat and lean. Unmarinated, so it goes on the grill first.
• Moksal. Pork neck or collar. Leaner than belly with more chew, and the cut regulars order when they want less fat without losing flavour.
• Galbi. Short ribs, usually beef, marinated in soy sauce, garlic, sugar, sesame oil, and Korean pear. The crowd-pleaser, and the most expensive thing on most menus.
• Chadolbaegi. Beef brisket sliced paper thin. Cooks in seconds and burns in a few more, so it needs someone paying attention.

If it is your first time, order samgyeopsal. It is the most forgiving on the grill, it is what the whole accompanying spread is designed around, and it is cheaper than the beef.

The one sequencing rule that matters

Grill unmarinated meat first and marinated meat last.

Marinades carry sugar, sugar burns, and burnt sugar welds itself to the grill surface. Once galbi has been on, everything cooked after it picks up scorched marinade. Restaurants that let you cook your own will change the grill plate when it gets bad, but the sequencing is on you, and it is the single difference between a meal that stays good to the end and one that does not.

What arrives without you ordering it

A spread lands alongside the meat: banchan, lettuce and perilla leaves for wrapping, sliced garlic and green chili, a small dish of sesame oil with salt, and ssamjang, the thick brown-red paste that is the whole point of the lettuce.

None of it costs extra at most restaurants, and all of it can be refilled by asking. Regulars ask for more lettuce roughly as often as they ask for more meat.

Building the ssam

The wrap is the format the meal is designed for, and it goes together in a fixed order:

1. Lettuce leaf flat on your palm, perilla leaf on top of it if you want the herbal note.
2. A piece of grilled meat, dipped first in the sesame oil and salt if you are eating unmarinated pork.
3. A dab of ssamjang, less than you think.
4. A slice of grilled garlic, a ring of chili, a pinch of rice or kimchi if you want it.
5. Fold it closed and eat it in one bite.

The one-bite part is not a flourish. A ssam is built to be a single mouthful, and taking two bites is the thing that marks a first-timer more than anything else at the table.

The social rules

• The youngest person handles the tongs and scissors. Cooking and cutting for the table is the job of the youngest or most junior person present. If that is you, pick them up without being asked.
• Do not pour your own drink. You pour for others, they pour for you, and keeping an eye on the glasses around you is the whole etiquette.
• Two hands when pouring for or receiving from someone older. One hand on the bottle or glass, the other supporting your forearm.
• Do not stab the meat to check it. Use the tongs to lift and look.
• Order the ending. Most places sell a fried rice or a cold noodle course cooked on the used grill at the end of the meal. Skipping it is a missed opportunity.

The short version

Two servings minimum, start with samgyeopsal, unmarinated before marinated, build the wrap in one bite, let the youngest person run the grill, never pour your own soju, and order the fried rice at the end. Everything else you can figure out at the table.

Speaking of the soju: what to drink and how the pouring works is its own set of rules. And if you are wondering what the meal is built on, most of the sauces trace to three ingredients in the Korean pantry.