Aspects of dining at Bifa Seafood restaurant may seem strange to those whose only experience of Korean cuisine is via local fast fare or yakiniku. It will test your expectations of not only Korean, but Chinese and Japan­ese fare as well.

Rest assured, in Korea it’s totally legit to have your tako wasabi ($11.95) with slush-textured ice — it’s considered refreshing — or to have hot dog condiments of pickle relish and mustard with doughy Korean-style haemul (seafood) okonomiyaki ($18.95), for that desired extra sourness.

This Seoul transplant otherwise does its best to fit into the local scenery by adding a poke plate ($16.95) to its menu and filling the room with Hawaiian music. The restaurant was empty early on a weekday so I requested a switch in the background music to K-pop, which seemed more appropriate, and the staff was happy to accommodate. Why not? There’s already Korean programming being displayed on a TV screen in the dining room.

It didn’t take long for the restaurant to start filling up with families of four to six. At first, I thought it was just a weekend ohana bonding phenomenon, but I was about to find out the real reason.

I’m accustomed to ordering about five dishes per restaurant visit, polishing them off easily. That was not the case here. If you’re ordering a stew, forget ordering much else. In my accounting, one pot is enough to feed six when supplemented with a few side dishes. (The restaurant suggests it’s enough for two to three, but I think that’s conservative.) Add just a couple more dishes and all in your party will waddle out happily and relatively inexpensively. Given that one jjim runs about $23 to $33, it works out to less than $6 per person when divided by six.

I’ve seen parties of 16 walk in and commandeer most of the seats in the small mom-and-pop near the top of Waialae Avenue, between Broken Rice and Azteca.

BECAUSE OUR mere five dishes looked like a royal spread, the owner kept stopping by to check on our progress and admire our doomed determination to finish, saying, “I like you guys.” Aww.

I’m particularly enamored of their khongchi kim chee jjim and wang kalbi kim chee jjim. Either would make a beautiful centerpiece for any meal. They’re essentially the same dish, the former a fish stew featuring saury (mackerel pike, $23.95), the latter tender boiled beef on the bone ($32.95). If I had to pick one, I’d go with the fish and order a plateful of sweet soy-marinated grilled kalbi to crush a meat craving.

The flavor of the stews here may be different than what’s generally expected because of the use of the sour fermented kim chee favored in Korea. A whole head of won bok goes into the stew, and when it’s boiling at the table the cabbage is trimmed down to bite-size pieces with scissors. So are the fish and kalbi.

Another dish that requires a big party is the maeun jogae tang ($24.95) a clear, jalapeno-spiced shellfish soup filled with more than two dozen clams and just as many mussels. Because of the high cost of food in the islands, we’re accustomed to seeing as few as six pieces of shellfish with seafood orders, so this felt like a huge luxury.

The seafood okonomiyaki, or fusion pajeonoyaki, proved interesting, even if it wasn’t one of my favorites. I missed the cabbage, which was replaced by heavy flour, but the tako and calamari in the dish were delicious, and use of Worcestershire-laced okonomiyaki sauce gave it a flavor profile that was more Japanese than Korean.

“SEAFOOD” COULD easily be dropped from the name of the restaurant, because it’s not an obvious specialty. The number of seafood dishes on the menu equals that of any other restaurant in town.

The restaurant is running a special on the Chinese-Korean fusion jajangmyeon black bean noodles — order one for $9.95 and get a second bowl for $5. I asked if one bowl was enough to share three ways, but was told it was a one-person portion. That might be the case if it were the only thing you were eating, but one bowl turned out to be plenty for three with other dishes on the table.

In Korean style, the sauce is presented on top of the heavy noodles and it takes some muscle to fold it in. The sauce itself was more sweet than savory, but it helped to add the mix of raw onions and black bean paste provided on the side.

It’s a dish usually eaten with kkanpunggi ($28.95), a sweet-sour stir-fry of fried chicken, but I didn’t care for the thick, spongy coating on the chicken. If you want chicken, the far better choice is yangnyeom fried chicken ($22.95) with its sticky, spicy kochujang-honey sauce.

Another draw is $2 domestic beer to go with that chicken, or buy a bottle of soju for $10.95 to $12.95 and get one free.

Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.