Here, finally, almost four and a half months after our brief visit to Seoul ended in July, is my last meal report from the trip. This was not our last meal in the city and there was nothing particularly special about the food but I’ve saved it for the end as it was eaten at a neighbourhood restaurant just a few minutes away from where we were putting up: Yongsan Wonjo Gamjatang. It’s the kind of restaurant, open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, that together with others of its type makes up the heart and soul of food obsessed cities like Seoul (or Tokyo or Los Angeles or New York). Restaurants like these are never going to get any recognition from international guides or tv shows or have long lines of influencers or influencer-persuaded people outside their doors; but they serve good, tasty food to a lot of people every day. As Yongsan Wonjo Gamjatang’s name indicates, the food they mostly serve is gamjatang or potato and pork neck/backbone stew, a dish that spells comfort at any time of year. We walked past it every day on our way to and from the subway lines in Seoul Station and finally made it in a couple of nights before we left. Here’s how it went.

We arrived a little before 7.30 pm for dinner and found the restaurant quite busy. They never filled up completely over the course of our meal but were bustling for most of it. The clientele seemed to be mostly people on their way home from work, mostly middle-aged and none that had any aspirations in the direction of hipsterdom. We sat down at a table adjacent to two Vietnamese women (who seemed like residents, not tourists) and quickly figured out our order.

Of course, we got a big cauldron of the gamjantang. This comes in a few versions. There’s one that’s mostly bereft of spice, one regular and one with aged kimchi. And for the solo diner there’s the option of a smaller portion served in a hot stone pot. There are 2-3 other soups/stews available as well but, as far as we could make out, every table had a large gamjatang on it. There’s also a menu of things that you can add to your stew. We selected the ramen, mandu (dumplings) and tteok (rice cakes) to add and also opted for the add-on of fried rice at the end of the meal. And because the missus can never resist soondae (blood sausage), we got an order of their stir-fried soondae. By the way, this is not the kind of place where you get a large assortment of banchan: two types of kimchi was it.

The food came out quite quickly. The stew was set on the burner at the table which was lit and kept on high till everything had come to a boil. At this point we added first the tteok and then the mandu and ramen; once everything was cooked, we turned the temperature down. There was a goodly amount of back and neck bones in the stew as well as a lot of herbs etc. I wouldn’t say it was the best gamjatang I’ve ever had but it did the job. At the end, one of the servers dumped rice into the little bit of soup that remained in our pot and cooked it down along with seaweed etc. to make the fried rice. This was our favourite part of the meal.

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

All of the above plus a large bottle of beer and a soda came to just under $50. Which is to say, it was a very good deal for what it was. As we’re unlikely to be back in this neighbourhood on our next, longer trip in the spring, we are unlikely to eat here again. But if you’re in the vicinity and looking for something at the intersection of easy, tasty and affordable, I’d recommend them for sure.

Alright, that’s Seoul in the books! The reports from the summer aren’t done, though. I still have a couple of Delhi reports to do, as well as a few reports from our brief visit to Kyoto in between our weeks in Tokyo and Seoul. I’ll sprinkle those in with reports from New York in October and hope to be done with them all by the end of the year—at which point, I’ll have some new Delhi reports plus some Los Angeles reports in the queue. Which will it be on Tuesday: Kyoto, Delhi or New York? I’m not sure. I do know I’ll have a Twin Cities report on a high-end Mexican meal on Wednesday as usual.