For once, meat wasn't the stand-out act

As you might have noticed from reading just a few of my posts, I'm a meat and seafood man. On rare occasions, I get distracted by unique ingredients such as Ube and Lucuma, but these occurrences are few and far between.

Jeonju, the foodie capital of Korea, is home to one of those rare occasions. The now world-renowned bibimbap (mixed rice with vegetables and chilli paste), originated from this city, and as ever, I had to go find the best, most original one. I normally prefer hole-in-the-wall type of restaurants, but Gajok Hwegwan was rated pretty highly by a number of bloggers, so I settled for this.

Not long after ordering the yukhwe (raw beef-topped) bibimbap set (15,000 won), a rather ridiculous amount of food arrived within my field of vision. Now straight to business - a hot, large metal bowl, containing rice, raw beef and egg yolk, and a plethora of fresh vegetables and the oh-so-important chilli paste (gochujang) – this is what I came to Jeonju for. After mixing up all the ingredients with my usual level of OCD thoroughness, I took my first bite. Just like my Jajangmyeon experience at Sinseonggak, it reminded me that often these dishes are slightly twisted over in the West to suit our often sugar-seeking palates. Too often over in Europe and the US, the gochujang used for bibimbap is a bit sweet, but in this undoubtedly more authentic version, it is much less sweet, and packs more of a punch. This allowed the sweetness of some of the other vegetables to come through more markedly, and left my palate in feeling satisfied in a very balanced kind of way. The beef, for once, didn't live long in my memory – in fact,  the more I ate, the more I appreciated the subtle interplay between the veggies, the rice and the chilli paste. Could I actually enjoy a vegetarian bibimbap?

The side dishes were overabundant but that is not a bad thing – particularly when one of them was a delightfully light egg souffle. At this point, as I was slightly sleep deprived after an overnight flight from Singapore, so I'm a little ashamed that I can't remember more about the side dishes, but I do remember the yellow mung bean jelly (right middle of the pic), the caramel-esque potato (bottom left) being not only tasty but providing the perfect counterbalance to the capsaicin-laced bibimbap.

Gajok Hwegwan 가족 회관
South Korea, Jeollabuk-do, Jeonju-si, Wansan-gu, Jungangdong 3(sam)-ga, 80
Open Daily 11:30 – 21:00