Back to Seoul. This report is actually of our second meal out in the city. We’d arrived the previous day and enjoyed a welcome dinner at Chon in Insadong. We were back in Insadong again the next day. Well, my family and I lived in Insadong for the full five weeks—it’s the students who were back in Insadong the next day. On our agenda was a day of tourism before the program proper began. The first half of the day was spent at the Gyeongbokgung Palace (clad in hanboks for maximum cheese quotient) and environs and the second half was spent walking to and then at Namdaemun Market. In between we had to eat a quick lunch. The itinerary had “lunch on your own” marked on it but we bailed the students out and took them for lunch with us. It had to be quick, it had to be at a place that could take 25 of us and it had to be a place that would be reasonably quick. At the intersection of all these variables was Myungdong Boribap & Kodari on Insadong St. Here’s how it went.
As you’ll know if you’ve been to Insadong, or as you’ll see very quickly if you ever go, it’s very much a tourist street. The street is lined with shops that sell souvenirs and so forth and there are also lots and lots of restaurants. Some of these are on the street itself, most are in the small alleys that branch off on both sides of the main drag. Myungdong Boribap & Kodari is more or less on the main street but it’s kind of hard to tell from the outside how big it is. You have to descend a level from the street to go in and it doesn’t seem very large when you do. But there’s an elevator that goes up to another floor and that one has two larger dining rooms in it. Neither was set up for service when we got there—and there was a staff member asleep on a mattress on the floor when we got there!—but they readily agreed to set it up for us. And in short order we had sat down and ordered.
What did we all eat? Keep in mind the constraint of time. We did not have enough of it for everyone to order separately for themselves—which would have required a fair bit of translation and explanation from the missus for almost everyone. Instead we established who wanted to eat a meal centered on beef bulgogi, who wanted to eat a meal centered on stir-fried spicy pork, who wanted to eat a meal centered on kodari or braised pollack, and who wanted a vegetarian meal and sat people accordingly.
The 12 beef eaters sat together and three burners were set down in front of four sub-groups of four. A large bulgogi casserole was set on each burner and they were given instructions on how to proceed. The 10 pork eaters received individual servings along with a bowl of seaweed soup each. The one fish eater likewise received an individual serving with a bowl of seaweed soup. The two vegetarians/vegans received bowls of boribap or barley rice with kimchi jjigae. The banchan that we all received was mixed into their bowls of boribap and mixed to make bibimbap. The others all received bowls of rice as well.
As with some of our other meals in Seoul, this was not a restaurant that we had in any way heard about or sought out. But as I think I’ve said before, the baseline of restaurant food in Seoul is so high that you are almost always assured of eating at least a tasty meal. So it was here We all enjoyed our food fine. None of it was revelatory in any way or particularly fine examples of their genres but it hit the spot and fueled us nicely for the rest of the day.
Launch the slideshow below for a closer look at the restaurant, the menu and what we ate. Scroll down for notes on service and price and to see how much it all cost.
Service was very friendly. While without the missus present it would have been a bit more of a challenge to get such a large number of non-Korean speakers set up, with that difficulty solved by her presence everything went swimmingly. Price was quite reasonable as well. 20,000 won/head for the beef, 12,000 won/head for the pork, 15,000 won for the kodari, and 10,000 won/head for the boribap bowls. Add in a few extra bowls of rice and the total came to 398,000 won all in or roughly $295. That’s for 25 people. I’m sure you’d agree that’s very good value for very solid food. I’m not sure I’d suggest you seek this restaurant out over others when in Insadong but it’s certainly a good bet for a good, quick meal.
Okay, I’ll be back in Seoul tomorrow, so to speak. Tomorrow’s report will be on a fish market.