Carne Station

for the big night out

Imagine a restaurant with one entrance fee and unlimited food and drink! For W23,000 Carne Station is your place. It attracts what should be called the “big night crowd”. This is the place you go to line your stomach with food, then fill it with alcohol. Birthdays, Stag Nights, Leaving Do’s, this is mostly used for parties or by those who like living it up big.

The drinks are generally cheap brands, or completely non-branded, but soft drinks, beer, wine, and spirits are all available as are the inevitable bottles of Soju. Given that the rest of Hongdae charges upwards of W5,000 for a drink, it’s not hard to drink your money’s worth in Carne Station.

Each table feature your standard Korean BBQ, but to keep costs low food is a self-service buffet. According to my Spanish-English dictionary “Carne” means “meat”; quite literally this is “Meat Station”, so as you would expect the bulk of the food available here is Korean BBQ. Most people create a healthy selection of meats from those available, but there is also an extensive selection of side dishes and salads. Being ‘eat-as-much as you like’, the emphasis here is definitely on quantity, but the quality is equal to that of the regular Korean restaurants.

The restaurant itself is remiscent of a cafeteria style dining hall with rows of tables for groups of hungry customers to seat themselves at. If you have a large party coming you can always reserve rooms at the side to ensure a bit more of a private party area. Whilst the décor is hardly enticing, Carne Station is not somewhere you visit to inspect the wallpaper, it’s a drink, talk, eat, and drink some more kind of restaurant.

All in all it’s hard to find someone who’s had a bad night at Carne Station, although there are plenty of people who seem to have bad hangovers from Carne Station, and several more that don’t really remember their visit at all (the classic Soju memory gaps…). With unlimited food and drinks, Carne Station is definitely not for the weak stomached, but for a big alcohol fuelled party it’s hard to beat Carne Station as the starting point. Heavy nights ahoy!!

Average Meal Price: W23,000

Nearest Subway Station: Hongdae Station, although it is a chain so there are several more around (i.e. Akpujong)

How to find it: From Hongik University Station take Exit 1 and follow the street. You will take an underpass to cross a junction, then Carne Station is about 50metres on your right hand side.