Pocha 32

Tucked away above a cell phone shop in the heart of K-town, the exterior of Pocha 32 blends so readily into its surrounding that you could easily walk by it a dozen times without noticing it was there. Inside, the décor is sparse to the point it could almost be described as industrial, luckily the warmth of a cheery crowd overwhelms the ambience. This isn’t the kind of place for a quiet tête-à-tête. It’s a place where big groups of friends come to celebrate and get very, very, very drunk.

Pocha is short for pojang macha, Korean street carts which serve small and tasty dishes in endless varieties. As the English have come to understand of curry, Germans of wurst, and Americans of White Castle, Koreans appreciate the fact that the enjoyment derived from the consumption of pojang macha increases at a rate more or less equal to the square of the number of units of alcohol consumed. The proof of this dangles over your head as you dine at Pocha 32 beneath a veritable sea of sochu caps fastened to nets hanging from the ceiling.

Sochu, has no fixed recipe, it’s distilled from sources as diverse as sweet potato, rice, barley and wheat. Its name roughly translates to: made of something burning, which is as ample and unambiguous a warning as you could hope for. To take the edge off that fire, it’s mixed with everything from lemonade to yoghurt. At Pocha 32 these concoctions are served in unassuming stainless steel kettles, or in the case of watermelon sochu in the halved fruit and then portioned into cups with a ladle.

A night out at Pocha should follow a simple pattern. Drink. Eat. Drink more. Repeat until you can’t bear the thought of eating another thing. Start simple – perhaps the Dak Gok Ji (chicken skewers) or the Kimchi pancake. Match with a giant bowl of watermelon sochu. Then move onto something a little more challenging and a lot tastier, perhaps the samgyupsal ojinga (Korean style bacon and octopus). If all goes well by the time you're finished you’ll end up as one patron did at the table next to us – smiling blissfully, eyes closed, forehead resting on the table, out cold.