5 Best Restaurants in Side Trips from Busan, South Korea

Specializing in quality cuts of marbleized beef grilled over red hot coals, this friendly, family-owned restaurant has an attentive staff that goes out of their way to make sure your slices are barbecued to perfection. If you're feeling adventurous they also serve yook hoe, a raw beef dish that is Korea's version of steak tartare.

This local institution is known for its Pyeonyang-style mool naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles), topped off with slices of thin pork. Once occupying a tiny house in the alley, the restaurant has now moved into a much larger brand-new hanok on the main road, and is the perfect antidote to the blazing heat of Daegu summertime.

While ggulbbang (honey bread) can be found all over town, this is probably Tongyeong's most famous (or at least most conspicuous) purveyor of the sweet treat. The building housing the bakery sits next to the main harbor and is done up in the shape of a giant orange sea pineapple, the marine creature that's also a delicacy in these parts.

This extremely popular local joint specializes in the Korean-Chinese dish jjambbong (noodles in spicy red broth) piled high with heaps of fresh seafood. Diners are given the option of 1–3 on the heat scale, though there is a mild version (Hayan jjambbong) for the chili-adverse. Unlike a lot of the old-school eateries in town, this place is bright and immaculate, bucking the notion that truly delicious Korean restaurants need to be a little run down in appearance.

Serving many styles dumplings since 1972, this celebrated local joint sets the standard in town. Their house specialty is meat-filled gun mandu (fried dumplings), oil-crisped so thoroughly that the set of ten arrives at your table fused together.