Oncheon

Oncheon is all about hot pot, Korean style. What I was curious about was how different was Japanese hot pot from Korean. It’s not that different. Both use high end quality meat, and their broths resemble their cultures. For example, Japanese hot pot tends to be light with miso or seaweed type flavors. The Korean hot pot seems to be similar to what you might find in Korean restaurants. I made a reservation for 2 for 5:30 PM on a Friday night without any issues.

Ambiance & Service

The interior is very homey. We were seated in a 2-seater table with an electric hot plate.

The food comes out very quickly since there’s very little to cook. The service is also very attentive, and it’s easy to flag down the wait staff if you need anything.

Food

The Milktea Honeycomb Makgeolli ($14 - $4 happy hour discount) came with oatmilk, brown sugar, and earl grey tea.

The Terra ($8) beer was a lager from Korea at 4.6% ABV for 12 oz.

The Su-Yuk ($32) was available for dinner only. This was slow cooked pork belly, bossam white kimchi, ssamjang, radish kimchi, and brine shrimp sauce. The pork belly was very soft, and the kimchi tasted great.

We ordered the Oncheon Signature Shabu-Shabu ($20 per person) with the soup base of Signature Doenjang. This was basically fermented soybean paste that has a nice salty, umami flavor to it. It came with unlimited soup. The soup was good.

Here they gave us the vegetable platter for each person. The vegetables came with plenty of varied types including mushrooms, bok choy, napa cabbage, and pumpkin.

We added a Kurobuta Platter ($22) which came with 90g of pork belly and 90g of pork collar. The meat was high quality and pretty good. They recommended 1-2 choices per person, but since we got the pork belly appetizer and unagi, we felt just one meat selection was enough.

We each received a platter of sauces included (starting top-left going clockwise):

• Peanut sesame - this was very similar to Japanese shabu shabu peanut sauce. It was very nutty and more wet than creamy.
• Homemade chili oil - this was not too spicy and had some very good flavors.
• Ponzu - this was acidic and punchy. This ended up being my preferred sauce.
• Green onions - I didn’t use this too much since the other sauces overpowered any flavors of the green onions.

We each received banchan.

This came with (going top-left clockwise):

• Potato salad - this was good
• Cucumbers - very typical pickled cucumber flavors with sweetened vinegar.
• Kimchi radish - small kimchi wrapped radish. This was good too.
• Jelly wrapped lychee (for cleanser) - at the end of the meal, I tried to take some of this, but the jelly broke apart leaving just the lychee. It was very refreshing though.

The Chanhap Unagi ($35) came with pan-fried fresh water eel over a bed of steamed rice with furikake and egg scrambles. There was also pickled ginger and wasabi. The unagi was pretty good and plentiful especially for the price. One warning though was that my partner noted that there were a lot of bones in one section of the fish. Either the fish was improperly cleaned or was intentionally not fully de-boned. The rice was decent, and the egg scramble was good. My partner did end up enjoying this over the shabu-shabu.

This also came with a banchan, which included (going top-left clockwise):

• Some sort of soy sauce dip - this was different in that they ask you to wrap the seaweed strips around the rice and dip it into this. I don’t think it was that needed.
• Seaweed
• Kimchi radish
• Jelly wrapped lychee (for cleanser)

I also ordered a side of Kalguksu Noodle ($4) to throw into the soup. These knife-cut noodles are very good. The price is a bit expensive, considering $4 in the supermarket will get you at least 8x more portions of similar quality.

Overall Impression

Oncheon is a decent hot pot place with Korean flavors. I think the price is reasonable, and all the flavors are very familiar. I don’t think you should make a special trip here, but perhaps if it was cold outside, this would warm you up plenty.

Yelp Jabs

I requested a staff to bring out a plate of beef for my puppy. The Server didn’t say anything didn’t even mention it was extra.

This Yelper exposed themselves that they thought things are to be free. They didn’t tip at all, nor did they pay for a plate of beef for their puppy. Unfortunately not tipping is heavily frowned upon in the U.S., and restaurants have a video of all of their diners. This can result in bad karma of some sort, so it’s best to not play with fire.

The service was mediocre. They did not come by once after the food came out. I was a bit disappointed since the food was delicious.

The service is really no different than any hot pot type restaurant. They will clean up your plates, and if you wave at them, they will come. They read the table at where the pacing is, since most diners don’t really feel a need to converse with the wait staff.

Revisions

1. Aug 29, 2025 - Initial revision.