This week’s Seoul report is a quick look at dinner at a Seoul restaurant I’ve reported on twice before: Gwanghwamun Gukbap. As with all the other Seoul restaurants I’ve reported on so far from this trip (here, here, and here), Gwanghwamun Gukbap is within walking distance of where we were staying, near Gwanghwamun Square. As the name suggests, the restaurant’s signature dish is gukbap (pork broth/soup with rice), but that’s not what we’ve been going back there for since we first ate there as a family in February 2024. That’s not because the gukbap is not very good; it is. It’s because we are soondae enthusiasts more than we are gukbap enthusiasts and Gwanghwamun Gukbap’s soondae is truly outstanding. We loved it when we ate it again in July 2025 and we loved it yet again on this visit. But soondae wasn’t the only thing we ate. Read on for more details.

We arrived on a Monday evening to find the restaurant as busy as it always seems to be. Their streak of Michelin Bib Gourmand awards continues unbroken since 2019 but the restaurant’s clientele has on all our visits been almost entirely locals (as far as we can make out anyway), a lot of whom at dinner appear to be people eating on their way home from work. That said, while on our first visit we did not see an English language menu, we were given a bilingual menu last summer and again on this occasion. So I suppose there must be enough non-Koreans eating there.

We had eaten and enjoyed the gukbap in 2024 but didn’t order it in 2025. We didn’t get it this time either. We did repeat one dish from 2025 though: the excellent galbi-jjim, which comes, steaming and bubbling, in a large stone casserole. Along with it we got another steaming and bubbling casserole dish: the braised beef tendon. Where the flavours of galbi-jjim are robust, this is a milder dish but is just excellent as well—though you do have to be a fan of the texture of tendon. And, of course, we had a platter of that outstanding soondae on the table as well. The only downside of writing this meal up is that I am now going to be fruitlessly longing for that soondae for a few days.

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

The total cost came to 118,000 won which is about $82 at the current exchange rate. That’s for all of the above plus four bowls of rice. An excellent value for excellent food. We’ll be back on our next trip as well for sure.

Okay, one more report to come this week. That will be of another meal eaten in New York last October. Look for that on Sunday.