"Awesome House," Cheap Buffet

Awesome House - (대박집)
Next to Kyungpook University, Daegu

Overview
The Good+ Cheap!!
+ Fresh meat from in-house butcher
+ Tons of organic veggies
+ Large and fancy
+ Cheap dinner BBQ
The Bad   - Buffet is lunchtime only
- Expensive alcohol
Best for: Lunchtimes, fresh and healthy meals

Food
Lunch:  From 11am to 2pm, "Awesome House" offers an all-you-can-eat buffet for \7,000!  With such a low price and high quality, the place certainly lives up to its name.  Their wide range of veggies is organic and made in Korea (except for Chinese kimchi).  Their pork is 생 (saeng), meaning "fresh" or never frozen, and comes from the the butcher shop located on the premises.   The buffet offers the meat in several forms, including bulgogi with noodles, spicy bulgogi, rib stew.



















At the buffet you're free to fill up on a do-it-youself 비빔밥 (bibimbap), 보리밥 (barley rice), or noodles.  However, the main theme is the 쌈 (ssam), meaning wrap.  Choose a lettuce leaf, add in some side dishes, sauces, and bulgogi, and then bundle it up and enjoy.  Mixing and matching to discover the perfect combo makes a meal much more rewarding.




To partake in the action, tell the woman who seats you "쌈밥뷔페" (ssambap bui-pae), meaning wrap buffet.  (Of course always remember to follow a request with 주세요 (jew-say-yo), meaning please.)  Then just grab a plate and dive in.

















Dinner: After 2pm, they no longer offer the buffet.  Instead it becomes your usual Korean BBQ joint, with 생삼겹살 (fresh pork three-layer meat), 목살 (pork neck meat), 뼈없는양념갈비 (boneless marinated pork rib meat) and 소갈비살 (beef rib meat).  The only unusual part is how incredibly cheap it is, thanks to the in-house butcher.  The meats mentioned above are \2,900 for the pork and \4,500 for the beef, and cheapest of all is their signature 대박삼겹살 (thinly sliced pork) for \1,500 per serving!  While the meats are dirt cheap, they try to reclaim some revenue by charging slightly more for alcohol: \3,500 for Soju and \4,000 for beer.



Atmosphere
It's a huge place, with probably around 40 booth tables.  It's also quite clean and modern being recently opened.  With such cheap food and a large venue, clearly the business strategy is to fill those seats with high quantities of asses.  From what I've, it seems to be working.  While it was quiet when we first arrived around 11:15am on a weekday, around noon students and workers were quickly packing in.  Around 1pm I'd imagine the buffet line would be chaos.

Otherwise it's a decent place to hang out and enjoy a cheap meal.  Amenities include the butcher, sauce fountains (not for drinking), coffee machines, a parking lot, and an indoor jungle gym for the kids.  The walls are lined with flat screen TVs displaying a CCTV feed into the kids' room.  It's a great monitoring tool for hungry parents....and pedophiles!  If you completely clear your plate, they'll let you fill out a raffle ticket to win a 47" 3D TV every 4th Thursday of the month. 



Location
It's at the very northern tip of the Kyungpook National University campus.  Walking out of 북문 (the campus' "north gate"), turn right.  It's a few blocks up on your right.


The address is: 대구광역시 북구 대학로 144
See map













1 comment:

  1. Awesome House doesn't offer the meat buffet anymore as of July 2015. It hasn't been around for a few years according to the owner. But the meat and the regular veggie buffet are pretty good!

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