I was craving stew in the morning, and a quick google search brought up this 24 hour store. However, when we got there around 8am, it was dark and nobody was in there.? Boo! Misleading information. Well, I wanted the stew that badly that we came back to Yukgaejang in the early afternoon. It seems to be a chain restaurant according to their website, too bad I couldn’t read Hangul.
Their menu consisted of a few things, which made it easier to order.
These were the side dishes – leek salad, pickled radish and fishcake. It was interesting to have the leek raw, which seemed to be pretty common in Korea.
Obviously, I went for the original spicy beef stew. Nothing goes better than a bowl of hot stew on a rainy day. O, it was amazing! It came steaming with rich beefy smell, the delicious kind. It looked red, but wasn’t actually that spicy. The soup had shreded beef, lots of scallions, some glass noodles and remnants of eggs. It was so simple yet it was so tasty. The scallions added a hint of sweetness to it. Also, the rice was perfectly chewy and not mushy. I actully finished it all, rice and soup.
I tried their kimchi mandu (dumpling) as well. They were deliciously filled with pork, kimchi, glass noodles and other magical ingredients that I can’t quite out my finger on. You dip it in the sauce they give you, which is vinegar with hot pepper spices and something sweet? Lol, I’m terrible, can’t even decipher all the ingredients. Anyhow, the dipping sauce was perfect for the mandus.
I think it was down time for the restaurant around 330, so they all came out and sat in a table MANUALLY shredding the beef. I attempted to take a photo sneakily. I later noticed that one of them was working a machine for shredding the beef as well. I can’t imagine the amount of work involved to prepare a whole day’s worth of shreded beef. Kudos to them all!?
Yukgaejang
45 Myeongdong 8na-gil, Chungmuro 1(il)-ga
Jung-gu, Seoul
Spicy beef stew (yukgaejang) – 9,000 won
Kimchi mandu – 6,000 won