Macho Steak, Hyehwa: iron-plate steak with rice
Dinner in Hyehwa on a weekend usually means a pasta place near Daehak-ro, an izakaya, or a chain. What I sometimes want instead is not a Western-style steak on a plate but meat on a sizzling iron pan, loud and salty. That is Macho Steak.
I first heard of it through Choo Sung-hoon’s YouTube channel, watching him eat steak with a bowl of white rice. I went to the Seongsu branch first, but I was not hungry that day and only had the iron-plate beef fried rice, and the room was tight enough that oil spat sideways from the plates. I had wanted the steak ever since. So this time my girlfriend and I drove to the Hyehwa branch on a weekend around six.
Before you go
| Item | Notes |
|---|---|
| Ordering | Kiosk, one dish per person. Tenderloin and sirloin each come in half and full sizes; full is one pound, half is for sharing cuts. We had a half tenderloin and a half sirloin |
| Booking | Naver or Catchtable. Weekend evenings and weekday 8pm slots are worth booking. At 6pm on a weekend the room was over half full with no wait |
| Parking | Korea National Open University lot, open 24 hours, about ₩400 per 10 minutes or ₩4,400 an hour, then a flat five-minute walk. Or Hyehwa station exit 1, about 100 meters |
| Korean name | 마초스테이크 혜화점 |
A theater-district steakhouse
Hyehwa exit 1 is two or three minutes away, but we drove and parked at the Open University, the public lot everyone uses for Daehak-ro. Marronnier Park, the Arko theater, the Sungkyunkwan campus, Seoul National University Hospital and the Myeongnyun and Ihwa alleys are all within reach, so a play and dinner, in either order, works easily.
The entrance tells you what kind of place this is: an iron plate engraved with the logo in the window, photos of Choo Sung-hoon at Rivera in Tokyo, a house plate by the door, 1975 MACHO on everything. Celebrity marketing usually puts me off. Here it is so openly the brand’s identity that it stops being awkward.
Coming from Seongsu, the first thing I noticed was the size. Wider spacing, two- and four-tops arranged so that even on a weekend evening we were not shoulder to shoulder with the next table, and no oil from anyone else’s plate. Wooden slat walls, black ceiling, grey tile floor. Plain, focused on the food.
You order at a kiosk with photos of everything, and when we hesitated a staff member came over and explained the difference between the cuts and sizes. Aprons are provided and you need one. On the table is a frame for a review event with an old-school prize board, the kind you played at a stationery shop as a child; at Seongsu I won a soft drink from it. A screen plays Choo Sung-hoon’s promo video on a loop and the wall above is covered in signed panels from visiting celebrities. It felt, oddly, like the waiting room of a small theater, which is a stretch, but this is Daehak-ro.
Rivera, via Nakameguro
Some background. Macho Steak brings the style of Rivera Steakhouse in Nakameguro, Tokyo, to Korea. Rivera opened around 1969 and its signature is a whole steak on an iron plate with a soy-based sauce and white rice. Tokyo locals and fighters and athletes kept it famous for decades, and Choo Sung-hoon’s video is what brought it to Korea. So the sauce, rice and steak combination here is not a steakhouse idea. It is a specific Tokyo idea. I am going to Rivera itself on my next Tokyo trip.
The sizzle when the plates arrive is absurd, in a good way.
Steak, sauce, rice
Two iron plates side by side: tenderloin soft, sirloin with more chew, and the half sizes mean you get both. Corn on the plate, a big bowl of white rice on the side, pickled jalapeno and the salty soy sauce. The red wooden-handled knife and fork cut without effort.
I ate the tenderloin first with only its salt: grill marks and a crisp surface, juice inside, beef flavor building as I chewed. Then the sirloin, with the firmer texture the tenderloin lacks. From the third piece I dipped into the sauce and ate it over rice, and that was where the meal actually started. Pour the sauce generously, dip a piece, set it on rice, and the seasoning is exactly right. The savory depth rises in a way the steak alone does not reach. That is when I understood why Choo Sung-hoon eats steak with rice. It was the Rivera combination all along. The fried rice at Seongsu had been very good, but you order the steak.
Sauce, then a piece cut with the grain, then a mouthful of rice, then corn, then a slice of pickled jalapeno to cut the richness, and the next bite is already calling.
On the way out there is a large oil painting of Choo Sung-hoon on the outer wall, in a suit, putting a piece of steak in his mouth. People stop for photos, and I suspect it pulls in a few curious passers-by. It is Choo Sung-hoon’s restaurant in every way except ownership, and if you have watched the video, the meal delivers what the video promised.
I’d recommend it to couples in their twenties and thirties who have just seen a play in Daehak-ro and want dinner, to anyone who tried the Seongsu or another branch and found it cramped, and to fans of Choo Sung-hoon who were curious. I plan to come back with friends who train, and I have a slightly ambitious idea of getting friends from abroad to watch the video first and then bringing them here. Next: Rivera in Nakameguro, and the full pound.
My rating: 4.5/5. The Seongsu disappointment is fully resolved, and steak with salty sauce over rice earns the price of the meal on its own.