6681 Beach Blvd
Buena Park, CA 90621
Rating: 
Located in Buena Park, Eight Korean BBQ serves up Korean BBQ with a focus on pork, specifically pork belly. Their most popular dish includes a combination of pork belly marinated eight different ways. When we entered the restaurant, there were plenty of tables available, and we were seated quickly. The server provided us with menus and took our drink order. After a quick review, we were ready to order.
Today, we decided to order the combo A, which included the eight different marinated pork belly strips, seafood soybean stew, kimchi, bean sprouts, mixed salad, and mozzarella kimchi fried rice. We also received a 9th flavor of pork belly by checking in. The original eight flavors of marinade include wine, original, black sesame, garlic, herb, curry, miso paste, and red pepper paste. The 9th flavor was galbi. Unlike the all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurants, this restaurant is full service, so the cooking is done in front of you by the server. Not long after we ordered, the tray of pork belly arrived along with a large bowl of soup. While waiting for the meat to cook, we munched on the spicy salad and side dishes. The soybean seafood soup arrived next, which is a very popular Korean soup that we never tried before. The soup did not take long to be ready to drink after it started to boil. The spiciness of the soup was perfect and had a lot of peppery flavors. There was an abundance of seafood along with the cabbage and tofu. It was nice to eat each type of seafood in the dish including shrimp, clam, and crab. Soon, the first batch of pork belly was ready to eat. The wine-infused pork belly was delicious and you can really taste the wine flavors. The original flavor was really good too, and went very well with the sesame oil salt dipping sauce. The black sesame flavored pork belly seemed to be more tender and delicious than the last two. The garlic flavored pork belly had the most flavor from the first batch and melted in your mouth. From the next batch, the kalbi pork belly tasted like traditional Korean BBQ flavors, which was nice and savory. The herb pork belly was heavily infused with herb, which was very tasty. The curry pork belly had heavy yellow curry tones and tasted good, but the other flavors were better. The miso paste pork belly was on the saltier side, but was still flavorful. The red pepper paste pork belly had just enough red pepper paste to not be overpowering and held onto a nice spicy Korean flavor. In the end, the server took the kimchi and bean sprouts and cooked the fried rice in the soup pot and added mozzarella. The fried rice was very tasty and became a nice end to the meal.
Overall, Eight Korean BBQ serves up some delicious pork belly in many innovative ways. Service was impeccable as she continuously came by to check on us and work on the grill. All of the pork belly was tender and juicy, but there were some pieces that were overly-fatty, which cannot be helped. There was plenty of food to two people to finish for this combo order. After eating so much pork belly, we probably won’t eat much of it for a while. There are currently two locations, which includes this Buena Park location as well as their Little Tokyo location. If you like Korean BBQ and love pork belly, then you must give Eight Korean BBQ a try!
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