[Shanghai Girl Eats] Botong Sikdang 普通食堂
Botong Siktang by Belloco | 普通食堂 by 倍乐 | Dianping
Address: 1/F, 660-686 Jiujiang Lu | 普通食堂 by 倍乐 – 九江路660-686号1层
Date visited: 2020.01
Price: RMB150-200
Will return: Yes
What to get:
– Thick cut pork belly
Botong Sikdang (普通食堂) is a Korean BBQ restaurant opened by the oppas behind Jeju Izakaya and Belloco Group. It serves traditional Korean style pork belly BBQ using North Korean black pork that has been quick-frozen at -40 degrees. This pork is the only BBQ meat on the menu and you can choose between thick or thin cuts.
To complement the pork belly, Botong Sikdang serves a handful of cheap Korean dishes like volcano cheese egg, spicy tteokpoki rice cake, and spicy beef intestine stew. If none of this sounds like your style or if you have dietary restrictions (like to pork or kimchi), then this is not the restaurant for you.
Botong Sikdang opens every day at 4:30pm for dinner and only takes walk-ins of 4 people or less (no reservations). I have been there as early as 5:30pm and as late as 8:30pm and I promise you there is a queue at every hour. When you sit down, you will notice the sea of mainly female customers around you who are all hoping to catch a glimpse of the owner who looks like he just walked out of a Korean drama. I bet you are probably one of those females, too. I am, too.
Pork belly BBQ (thick cut RMB68; thin cut RMB60)
Recommend: yes
You order at least the number of portions of the pork belly BBQ as how many people you have (for example: 4 people must order minimum 4 portions of pork).
You start with the following spread of banchan (sides), raw egg (which you will need to scramble before dipping meat into it), wasabi, and dried pollack powder. The two plates in the middle go onto the BBQ grill while leafy greens, potato salad, and kimchi radish can be eaten as is.
The staff will cook the BBQ for you alongside the vegetables. I find the kimchi tastier after it’s been grilled than in its original form. As for the pork belly, I personally like the thick cut a lot more than the thin cut. For me, thick cut has more substance and I like the taste of a lot of fat melting into the meat. The pork belly is good mixed with raw egg and wasabi. I recommend ordering mostly thick cut and you can try one portion of the thin cut if you want.
Volcano cheese egg (RMB48)
Recommend: nice to order but not must have
This is more of a novelty for the photos. It’s basically egg topped with cheese.
When you leave, they hand you a small block of white ice cream, which is an old school ice cream I used to eat in Shanghai when I was a kid. If anyone can relate/recall, these also came in a bigger, square blue box.
