Tteokgalbi - Must eat food at Gwangju

17 November 2025

Gwangju, located in South Korea's Jeolla region, is a renowned culinary hotspot known for rich, flavorful, and varied dishes. One of their signature local delicacies is the tteokgalbi (grilled minced beef or pork short rib patties).

The best place to try this dish while visiting Gwangju is at the Tteokgalbi Street in Gwangju Songjeong-dong. This area is renowned for having around 20 restaurants specializing in this traditional grilled dish and our hotel in Gwangju (Gwangju Madrid Hotel) is just a few minutes walk to the street!

We had already sampled tteokgalbi during our stay in Jeonju Hanok Village but we have to try this dish at its place of origin. The tteokgalbi here stands out from tteokgalbi found in other regions in a few ways. Most places use 100% beef in the patties, but Songjeong-dong tteokgalbi uses a mix of beef and pork. This change was made in the 90s in order to keep the prices the same during a tough financial season. The restaurants here also serve a pork bone soup with the meal, made from boiling pork bones with kelp and radish for over a long period of time.

After checking the reviews of the various restaurants on this street, we chose to go a restaurant called Songjeong Tteokgalbi (Google Map location here). Established in 1976, this could be one of the pioneers of this dish.

There is often a queue to enter this popular restaurant but there was no queue when we arrived. Probably there are lesser people dining out on a weekday.

The restaurant is very spacious and clean. The restaurant has many traditional Korean style dining tables with low tables and futons. Thankfully, we were shown to a Western-style table that is easier on our legs.

Tteokgalbi is their main dish but the menu also offered bibimbap and other Korean dishes.

We came for the tteokgalbi and ordered one with special Korean beef and one with a combo of beef and pork.

The beef tteokgalbi is the one on the right and is darker in colour.

While the beef tteokgalbi is tasty, we found it a bit too dry. The pork and beef combo was juicier and tasted better. This is one instant where food with cheaper ingredients tasted better than the one with more expensive ingredient.

This restaurant is known to serve many side dishes (banchan) with the beef patties. We were provided with more banchan than the tteokgalbi restaurants in Jeonju.

There are 8 side dishes, plus a bowl of pork bone soup, steamed rice and items (garlic, gochujang, green chilli pepper) for ssam.

There are 8 side dishes, plus a bowl of pork bone soup, rice and Korean ssam.

      

The tteokgalbi was incredibly tender and delicious. It goes well with rice and also with the side dishes. But it is also fun to eat tteokgalbi wrapped in lettuce.

A highlight of dining here is the complimentary pork bone broth. The broth is so flavourful, a result of simmering pork bones and radish for hours. 

Meaty pork bone in delicious broth. This is served as part of the tteokgalbi meal.

The lady staff is friendly. She offered to top up the side dishes after we finished some of them. We told them we would like to have more soup and she brought a larger bowl of hot pork bone broth with a ladle for us to refill as much as we want.

The staff brought us a large bowl of pork bone soup with more meaty bones. She also refilled the banchan that we loved the most.

Happy diner.

After paying for our dinner, we were offered free Yakult (Japanese-originated probiotic cultured milk drink). There is also an ice cream and coffee machine at the entrance.

We made ourselves a cup of hot coffee to enjoy on our slow walk back to our hotel.