Bongcheon Station kodari for three at opening: Sangdo Neulbori

An open-run with friends at Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch, our go-to Bongcheon Station kodari (braised pollock) restaurant. It's been a while since I had such a neat, proper Korean spread when meeting friends. Kodari jorim — the kind of dish everyone fights over — has apparently become our brunch food now that we've reached that age haha. These days I just want meals that are easy on the stomach. *By "open-run" I just mean we timed our arrival to the store's opening, nothing more dramatic than that.

The siraegi kodari jorim (3-person portion) we enjoyed as the lunch special at Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch.

Where is Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch, and which subway exit?

Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch, a well-known Bongcheon Station kodari restaurant, is a very close 2-minute walk from Exit 5. If you're coming by subway, Exit 6 has an escalator, so it's more comfortable to come out that way. From Exit 5, turn right past the café and it's straight ahead. It's on the ground floor of a building right next to the main road.

Sangdo Neulbori's real opening time: 11:30am, not 10:30am

Naver search said the restaurant opens daily at 10:30am and closes at 9:30pm, but in reality Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch opens at 11:30am. (Since we had such a great meal, I submitted a correction request to Naver's business hours for anyone who might get confused — fingers crossed it gets updated 🙏) We had planned to meet at 11:30am, so we accidentally ended up doing a kodari open-run. We arrived about ten minutes early and were still let in ahead of time.

Menu lineup and the 2,000 won takeout discount

Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch doesn't just do kodari jorim — the mains also include siraegi kodari jorim, abalone kodari jorim, duck-and-baby-octopus hot plate, plus rice dishes like barley bibimbap and cockle bibimbap, and side dishes like spicy sandfish salad, cockle salad, and buckwheat pancake. There's plenty to eat even if you skip the kodari.

Every menu item is available for takeout, and ordering kodari to go gets you a ₩2,000 discount.

Inside Sangdo Neulbori: a dining room full of older regulars

With ochre-wall-style interior (not actual ochre walls) giving off a countryside grandmother's-house kind of vibe, Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch felt comforting even before the food arrived. My friend said it's always a busy, popular spot. By around noon, tables were filled with older diners, and based on my past experience, a restaurant packed with elderly customers at lunchtime is always a good sign.

What comes with the lunch special: seaweed soup and steamed egg

We ordered the siraegi kodari jorim for three, and without us even asking, the owner kindly gave us the lunch special pricing (thank you, sir!!). The side dishes were also neat and generous — seaweed soup, water kimchi, cucumber and hot pepper doenjang salad, and the essential bean sprouts that go with kodari jorim. There was so much to eat that we opened our rice bowls and started on the sides like a full Korean set meal even before the kodari arrived.

The seaweed soup was genuinely delicious — well-seasoned, with the soft, deep flavor of the seaweed.

Then steamed egg showed up too. You could basically eat this as a full Korean set meal.

What's on the self-serve bar at Sangdo Neulbori

Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch has a self-serve bar too, with bean sprouts (which you'll want to refill a lot while eating kodari jorim), seasoned radish salad and young cabbage kimchi for making your own bibimbap, and roasted rice water (sungnyung) to finish the meal. Worth making good use of. *Seaweed refills need to be requested separately.

If someone had told us at the start that the self-serve bar had bibimbap ingredients beyond the bean sprouts, we would have made ourselves a proper bowl — a bit of regret discovering that after we'd already finished eating. Still, mixing rice into the kodari jorim sauce is its own special treat, so we were satisfied even without the bibimbap.

Siraegi kodari jorim for three: how does it taste?

The siraegi kodari jorim at Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch, piled high with siraegi (dried radish greens).

Radish and potato were generously included too. We ordered siraegi kodari jorim but got to enjoy braised radish and braised potato along with it.

My friends took photos from every angle of Sangdo Neulbori's siraegi kodari jorim. It looked delicious from every direction.

Pushing aside the mountain of siraegi revealed kodari packed with meat — moist enough to be chewy without being dried out, easy and tender to eat. If you want even more siraegi, you can add extra (₩5,000).

There were chewy rice cake strips in there too, and the radish was genuinely sweet and delicious — huge pieces, perfect for sharing among friends. If you love rice cakes, there's an assorted rice cake strips add-on (₩2,000).

The best way to eat kodari jorim

Put rice, kodari, bean sprouts, and siraegi together on a piece of seaweed and eat it as a wrap — mixing the rice into the kodari jorim sauce first makes the flavor even deeper. Despite its color, the kodari jorim at Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch wasn't very spicy at all, which made it very easy to eat, and there was a subtle sweetness from the radish and potato coming through too.

A memorable line posted at the entrance of the restaurant. It was so good we wanted to come back — but that witty sign at the door made it feel like a place worth visiting a hundred times. Sangdo Neulbori Bongcheon Station Branch!