The city is expensive, but your next meal doesn’t have to be. The $25 Diner hunts down the best restaurants where you can eat like royalty for a song.

At 11:05 a.m. on a weekday morning, the straight-backed booths at the Richmond Korean restaurant Han Il Kwan are already filled with long-time regulars and neighborhood retirees — in other words, the folks who know when and how to score the deals. The doors open at 11 a.m., and by noon you can expect a full dining room.

From the outside, the restaurant doesn’t look like much, just a windowed storefront and a tired sign that has been casting a shadow over the corner of 19th Avenue and Balboa Street for decades. But Han Il Kwan has been regarded as one of the city’s best options for Korean food for more than 30 years.

Step inside, and you’ll find a homey interior with well-worn wooden screens in the entryway and faux eaves that wrap around the dining room. By day, it’s a relatively calm scene. At night, families crowd around wooden tables inset with circular grills, a pile of short ribs sizzling in the middle. 

Almost all of Han Il Kwan’s lunch specials (available Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.) ring in under $20. The only exception is the gal-bi, or marinated short ribs, which will set you back $23. The remarkably low price includes more than just a protein of your choice; it’s a colossal Korean feast that’s likely to leave you in need of an afternoon nap.  

The meal starts with a spread of banchan: seven small, white bowls brimming with a multicolored array of sides that could make a light meal on their own. You can count on a fiery red pile of classic kimchi and crunchy bean-sprout salad, accompanied by sesame-inflected batons of cucumber, irregular hunks of radish, tiny wheels of pickled daikon, jiggly cubes of mung-bean jelly, and meaty slices of fried fishcake. Then comes the appetizer: a hot stone bowl brimming with a bubbling, soft tofu stew. It’s not a sample-size starter but a substantial portion of mild stew that’s punched up with kimchi and brimming with molten tofu.

The main attractions land on the table alongside a metal bowl of sticky white rice. Unlike dinner, which can be a smoky tableside affair at which you cook your food, lunch is prepared for you. (If you ask me, it’s another point in favor of going during the day; I don’t relish heading into afternoon meetings smelling of grilled meat.) The lunch portions are smaller but not scant. My dining companion and I worked our way through about half of the sweet-soy marinated beef and spicy gochujang-flavored pork before throwing in the towel. 

After packing up the leftover meats and banchan, our server delivered one more treat: two petite glasses of sikhye, a sweet rice punch. Made with malt barley and cooked rice, it’s commonly served as dessert and is supposed to aid digestion thanks to its fiber and antioxidants. I want to believe this, considering that at the end of the substantial lunch, I all but rolled out of there. 

The Standard suggests:
Bulgogi lunch special: $19.50
Total: $19.50