Imun Seolnongtang, located about a 5-7 minute walk from where we’re putting up, is avowedly one of the oldest, if not the oldest formal restaurant in Seoul. Some sites list the year of opening as 1904, others as 1907—either way, it’s more than a century old. And I believe it has been at the same location since the beginning, though the old premises have been replaced by a concrete building. Said building looks deceptively small as you approach but then when you go in you realize that the large white, windowless block that you’d taken to be a neighbouring storehouse is actually where the dining room of the restaurant is located. I apologize for rhetorically making you the one taken in by this when it was in fact me. It’s a very functional dining room, with lots of tables pretty close to each other. There are also a few group dining rooms along one side, one of which has traditional floor seating. No matter where people are seated, however, they’re likely to have a bowl of steaming soup in front of them. We certainly did at the quick lunch we ate there last week.
As the name indicates, the restaurant’s specialty is seolnongtang—often also transliterated as seolongtang or sullungtang (which is generally how I transliterate it, following my introduction to the dish in Los Angeles’ Koreatown). Sullungtang is a soup made by simmering beef bones for a very long time, along with brisket and cuts of offal. The resulting milky broth is served in a stone bowl with rice and noodles. The restaurant also serves doganitang, which is made from beef knee, and meoritang, which is made from the head of the animal. All of these can be got in regular or special incarnations. What makes the special incarnations special, I don’t know as we got one regular sullungtang and one regular doganitang. Regardless of which beef bone soup you get, you salt it to taste at the table and add green onions. You may also choose to add the water of the kkakdugi or cubed radish kimchi that’s on the table.
The restaurant also specializes in sliced meat platters, in particular sliced head meat with thick layers of fat and gelatin. We got one of these. It arrived in a shallow casserole with some broth, vegetables and mushrooms, and was placed on a burner on the table. Once things start bubbling, we picked up slices of the meat in our chopsticks, dipped it in the soy-based sauce that came with it and ate it.
How was it all? The sullungtang was very good—though I’d be hard pressed to pick it over the doganitang (or frankly, be able to discern a clear difference between the broths) or to say it was clearly superior to other good sullungtangs I’ve had in LA and also last year in Seoul. I like a good bowl of sullungtang, especially on a cold winter morning, but wouldn’t go very far out of my way for it. The sliced head meat, however, was dynamite. It’s a lot of meat and at 46,000 won is not cheap either. You’d probably want to be in a group of four as we were, with everybody eating soup and picking at the meat platter.
For a look at the restaurant and what we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.
The posted menus in the restaurant are all in Korean. I’m not sure if there are English menus available for tables with no Korean speakers at them but I rather expect it’s not a hard place for non-Korean speakers to navigate. This because it has a Bib Gourmand from the Michelin Guide and so attracts more foreign custom than you might expect a downhome beef bone soup joint to pull. Price, for two soups and one head meat platter—more than enough food for the four of us—we paid 77,000 won or just about $58. Not cheap but not very expensive either in Seoul.
Okay, my next restaurant report will take us back to Bombay for another seafood-focused meal. That’ll be on Thursday. We’ll come back to Seoul eating on the weekend.