Gangnam Station date night: chimichurri pork jowl at Moa Gangnam

Gangnam Station fusion Korean food — this is Moa Gangnam.

Moa Gangnam hours, parking and waiting times

• Hours: Daily 11:00–22:00
• Break time: 15:30–17:00
• Last order: 21:00
• Parking available
• Waiting expected (evenings)

Where Moa Gangnam is and what the room feels like

Moa Gangnam sits a little up from Gangnam Station. I'd heard it was a good spot for a Korean-food date near Gangnam Station, so I came to check it out.

On a blind date or a date in Gangnam, going too casual or too formal can both feel a bit awkward. Moa Gangnam has enough of a point of interest in the food, while still letting you share several dishes, so it was easy to eat slowly and keep talking.

I wanted something different from a typical pasta place that day, so picking this Gangnam Station restaurant for a date turned out to be a good call.

What we ordered from the Moa Gangnam menu

What would pasta taste like with salted fermented fish stirred in, or cream sauce with gondre (mountain thistle greens) added? Dishes that take familiar Korean ingredients and put them through a totally different cooking method — just reading the menu names made me curious, haha.

We ordered perilla oil salted fish pasta, gondre cream sujebi (hand-torn dough soup), and fern-herb jimichuri pork jowl. They all seemed to be best-menu items, haha.

First tastes: banchan and beer at Moa Gangnam

The basic side dishes (banchan).

Climbing up the hill to get here was a bit of a workout, so I went straight for a beer.

Even though it was just Cass, it was cold and delicious, haha.

Perilla oil pasta with salted seafood

The perilla oil salted fish pasta didn't taste quite like the name suggests — more like a perilla oil kimchi pasta, if anything? It looked unmistakably like a creative fusion dish. This Gangnam Station restaurant is different, for sure.

A colorful, traffic-light mix of colors 🚥

The visual of the fully tossed noodles was seriously mouthwatering. The more you mix the noodles, the more that toasted-sesame-like perilla oil aroma comes through, and combined with the salty tang of the fermented fish, it went in a direction totally different from a typical oil pasta.

There was a perilla leaf fragrance drifting up too, and the deep, rich perilla oil scent mixed with a tangy note that really woke up the palate.

The noodles were cooked just right, chewy and springy, and once you'd eaten all the sauce, the noodles left a strong impression on their own, haha.

The salted fish didn't just add saltiness — it felt like it filled in a deep flavor that comes from fermentation. Among the round, nutty richness of the perilla oil, the salinity gave the sauce a defining point, so it never felt one-note. The seasoning was well-balanced and it was really delicious.

What I liked most was that the noodles and sauce didn't feel separate. Every bite brought the perilla oil aroma first, followed by the salty backbone of the fermented fish, and finally a nutty aftertaste. It's a dish that doesn't lean fully toward Korean or Western food, so it'll come to mind whenever I want an unusual pasta at a Gangnam Station restaurant.

Pork jowl with chamnamul chimichurri

The fern-herb jimichuri pork jowl was a genuinely pretty-looking dish. There were four different dipping sauces, well arranged so you could pick whichever you liked.

Thin but well-grilled, tender pork jowl.

Pork jowl is a cut with fat threaded densely throughout, so when grilled properly, the outside develops a savory char while the inside keeps a distinctive springy texture.

The more you chewed, the more the nuttiness from the fat and the meaty aroma came through in stages. The jimichuri made with fern herb (charnamul) really changed the mood. Eating pork jowl alone can build up a heaviness from the fat, but the fresh herb scent and the sauce's bright flavor cut through it in between bites. Ahh — it was harmonious and delicious. So after each bite of meat, my mouth never felt weighed down.

Gondre cream sujebi

When you hear sujebi (hand-torn dough soup), you usually think of an anchovy broth, but with cream it takes on a completely different mood. In the structure, the smooth, rich texture of the cream is cut through by the distinct herbal aroma of gondre, keeping it from feeling too heavy.

Scooped up with a spoon, the sujebi had a soft yet properly chewy texture. Because it holds sauce more broadly than pasta noodles, it's especially good for that — and interestingly, the gondre aroma never got lost in the cream. It's the kind of dish that makes you realize familiar sujebi can be reinvented like this, and a fun plate to talk about together on a Gangnam Station date.

Is Moa Gangnam worth it for a date?

After this Gangnam Station date meal, of course we finished up with a claw machine >.<

🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵 Finding good fusion Korean food near Gangnam Station these days is hard, but this one earns its spot as a Gangnam favorite :) It's clean and approachable — a great place to bring foreign friends, too.