[Seorae Maeul] Izakaya Ilbo (이자카야 일보)

Izakaya Ilbo(일보) is located in Seorae Maeul (서래마을), and probably is one of the hottest Izakayas in Seoul right now.

 Ilbo serves variety of Japanese style dishes ranging form assorted sashimi to deep fried chicken.

 And as most of the izakayas are, Ilbo is not a place to go to if you are planning on having a night of cheap drinking.

They charge you 3,500KRW for frikkin lemon slices.

Otoshi

I guess kind of amuse-bouche? 

Diced daikon radish boiled down in soy sauce, and deep fried shrimp head.

Drink of the night was Bizan Clear, a Japanese soju (I guess shochu in this case).

It's a good soju but I don't really have a good memory with this particular drink. I always end up drinking way too much. good times, good times

I really liked the glasses here.

Normally, you won't even think about drinking soju in these sort of cups.

Very tasty.

We started with roasted herring.

It's cooked in an oven, and served with three different types of salt.

From left to right, they are green tea salt, regular salt, and citron salt.

Cooked perfectly with nice crispy crust and moist flesh.

Herrings are quite boney but the bones are pretty soft so you can just ignore them.

Tori Nanbanzuke

Basically a deep fried chicken served with special vinegar sauce.

Chickens were nice and crispy, and seasoned very well.

I didn't notice the chickens were buried in so many pickled peppers.

The peppers may seem intimidating but they weren't that spicy.

The peppers added nice appetizing heat to the chicken.

Second dish was shrimp marinated in special soy sauce served with rice.

These shrimps have been bathing in special sweet soy sauce and soaked up all the tasty goodness deep within every inches of their sweet flesh.

Rice is just ordinary rice sprinkled with furikake (basically a seasoning flakes)

Oh, and an egg yolk.

You can eat the shrimps by them selves, or you can mix it with the rice with few spoons of that special soy sauce.

Sucking on shrimp head. One of the greatest things that you can do with your life.

Sweet and salty goodness.

Agedashi tofu.

It's a deep fried tofu dish.

Crispy on the outside, nice and soft on the inside.

Eat with caution as deep fried tofu can be scorching hot.

Maguro natto yamakage

Tuna, natto, okra, Chinese yam (white stuff), and pickled radish (orange stuff). 

Colorful and pretty huh?

But you have to mix them up.

You can eat it by itself or...

eat it with dried seaweed they provide.

Actually, this dish will be quite tasty if you pour it over white rice and eat it as donburi.

Actually(2), this dish will be better if it had more tuna.

Nankotsu karaage.

It's a deep fried chicken cartilage.

You may think eating chicken cartilage is weird but these are great with beer or with any alcoholic drinks.

The mayo sauce that comes with was great as well.

 Mentaiko dashimaki.

It's basically a sweet egg omelette with salted pollack roe inside.

And since we ordered so much food, complimentary skewers.

We ended up drinking two bottles of these...

And one more bottle of Ilpoom Jinro.

Definitely a fun night with fuzzy memories.

Aside from the price, Ilbo definitely is a great place to drink with great food.

Izakaya Ilbo (이자카야 일보)

92-12 Banpo-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul, 02-3477-4445

(서울시 서초구 반포동 92-12)

Business hours: 17:00 - 02:30