I’d said I’d have another Bombay report today but I lied. My remaining Bombay reports are very image-heavy and I don’t have the time right now to resize and process large numbers of images. And so I have for you another quick report from Seoul, of lunch at Gwanghwamun Gukbap. I noted in my report of lunch at Ryujung Dakgaejang that Seoul is filled with restaurants that specialize in specific dishes and have very little else on their menus. Well, Gwanghwamun Gukbap does have almost 10 items on their menu but odds are almost every table will have their eponymous gukbap on it. Gukbap literally means soup with rice. Here the soup is made with pork bones and meat and is served with slices of perfectly cooked pork. The rice is not served in the soup, as is traditional, but alongside for you to add as you see fit. I can report that the gukbap is indeed very good but we actually liked another dish even more. Read on for details.

As you would also expect from the name, the restaurant is located off Gwanghwamun Square. It takes up the ground floor of an unprepossessing building in the middle of a car park surrounded by other unprepossessing buildings. The interior is large and filled with tables of varying sizes and types. You might end up sitting on stools around a four-top, at a large communal table, or in regulation two or four-tops. The menu is posted in Korean on the wall. Perhaps there’s an English menu on demand but we didn’t see one. The server will show up pretty quickly to ask for your order and then the food will also show up pretty quickly. At least that was the case for the things we ordered: gukbap and soondae. Perhaps if you got the galbi-jjim or some of the other dishes on the menu it might take longer, but they obviously have the pork soup always on the go; and soondae is not prepared to order either.

There’s not very much by way of banchan: some cut mild peppers and garlic that you dip into a seasoned bean paste; marinated shellfish of some kind and seasoned green onions. And, oh, a pot of ggakdoogi/radish kimchi on every table—this was rather good. A notice on the wall in Korean informs that the soup will arrive already seasoned and that if you need more salt you should add some of the salted shrimp that’s also on every table. We tasted the soup and added a fair bit of salted shrimp to get it up to our preferred saltiness. The broth was pretty damned good and the pork slices were tender as well. And though the rice was served separately, we ended up adding all of it to our soups anyway. The pleasures of this dish are entirely of the mild/subtle kind but it was very comforting on a chilly, slightly damp day in Seoul.

But as good as the gukbap was, the scene-stealer was the soondae. It was richly larded with blood and the texture was just wonderful. One of the best things we’ve eaten in Korea on this trip, the missus said, and I had to agree (indeed, it was better than the soondae served the next day at a very hoity toity restaurant in Gangnam-gu). We ate it with the salted shrimp and the seasoned salt.

For a look at the restaurant and what we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scrolll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

There’s not much to service in restaurants of this kind in Seoul but we didn’t have trouble getting anything we needed (more rice, a refill of our kimchi pot). Price? 52,000 won or just about $38. That’s pretty good considering all four of us were pretty stuffed. Not that we will on this trip, in which only two weeks and not too much room for repeat visits remain, but on a future visit I would like to try their galbi-jjim and some of the other larger dishes as well.

Alright, I think my next restaurant report will also be a quick’ish report from Seoul. That will be on Saturday. On Sunday I might have time to finally put up one of those larger Bombay reports. Let’s see how it goes.