IFC Mall Korean restaurant with room for wedding invite party: Modam

I went to a Korean restaurant called Modam Urban in IFC Mall, Yeouido!!

From what I found beforehand, they give you six appetizers as standard, separate from the main dish, so it doesn't feel plain when you're treating someone — you feel taken care of, which makes it quite good value.

And honestly, my friends kept asking why the food kept coming out so well here — the table ended up completely full, and it was such an enjoyable meal.

Modam Urban's six standard appetizers

As soon as we ordered our mains, six kinds of appetizers were set up on the table bar.

Here's the lineup. Since all of this comes as standard side dishes, how could you not bring people here for a treat~~~~~ Seeing it in person, the food came out so well that it seemed like a lot of people use this place for parents' first meetings too! Of course, that can be done in the room.

This is a cold dish with smoked duck — smoked duck laid on top of a salty, tangy Korean-style salad. Exactly the taste you'd imagine!

The spicy mushroom jeon-gwa my friends highly recommended

This one is spicy mushroom jeon-gwa (sweet-savory glazed fritters). Honestly I wasn't going to bother, thinking jeon-gwa at a Korean restaurant is always the same predictable taste~? But my friends tried it first and insisted I had to eat it, and it was genuinely delicious hahahaha.

The batter was thin, and it was made with plump shiitake mushrooms, so the chewy texture was great. And the sauce most of all was sweet in just the right way that it didn't get sickly.

This is called a grilled mini-course salad — what course could that mean..? The salad used butterhead lettuce, so it was really soft, and the dressing was tangy enough to pair well even alongside the main meal.

The perilla oil capellini I thought was the main dish

This is perilla oil capellini! Before coming to Modam Urban, when I looked it up, I thought capellini was one of the main dishes. But turns out this was also just part of the standard pre-meal spread. You sprinkle perilla oil and garlic sauce over the capellini noodles, mix it with perilla powder, perilla leaves and seasoned laver, and eat it with raw shrimp.

Once mixed, the portion turned out to be bigger than expected too — enough that everyone shared it two or three times over and there was still a little left, which I liked.

And this was chamnamul (aster) namul and mushroom pyeonyuk (sliced boiled meat) — the first time I'd ever had it! Even though it's called pyeonyuk, it's made from mushrooms, so it wasn't too heavy or filling. It was a taste I'd never had anywhere else, so it felt fresh, and the chewiness of the mushrooms really came through in the pyeonyuk too.

Lastly, served warm — mung bean porridge!! I don't like mung beans, but it was blended finely so the mung bean flavor wasn't strong, more like a slightly sweet, savory pumpkin cream soup. Just like I'd heard, the pre-meal dishes really came out well, and I was glad I brought my friends here. Highly recommend!!!

Modam Urban's fusion Korean main dishes

I heard the day's rice pot, limited in daily quantity, was Modam's signature main dish, so I ordered it. I also tried the crab broth octopus pasta served with linguine, plus house-made tteokgalbi and grilled abalone!! The house-made tteokgalbi is also one of Modam's best menu items~

Since it's Korean-based, ordering the tteokgalbi came with white rice, doenjang soup, stir-fried kimchi and baek-kimchi — I thought that was a nice touch too. Of course, being Korean, you've got to finish it off cleanly with kimchi on the side, right~?

The chef's pick crab broth octopus pasta apparently uses house-made crab sauce, and the crab flavor was rich and the sauce was thick — I liked it. The flat linguine noodles meant the sauce stuck to them well~ And thankfully the braised octopus that came with it was really tender — success!!

Tteokgalbi and grilled abalone, easy to share

This is grilled abalone with a whole live abalone from Wando on top, alongside aged tteokgalbi!! The seaweed chip garnish was displayed so nicely it matched the plate perfectly.

The tteokgalbi came out in two big pieces, and they even gave us scissors and tongs so we could share it properly.

The taste was — sweet and well-grilled tteokgalbi, that kind of feel..?

Personally, I liked that they gave us baek-kimchi and stir-fried kimchi together with the tteokgalbi. It felt like eating a healthy home-cooked meal...!!

And the stir-fried kimchi — why is it so good hahahahahahahaha. If I'm ever traveling abroad, this alone would be enough to demolish a bowl of instant rice.

My favorite of the day, Modam's signature rice pot

And this was my top pick of the day. Modam's signature rice pot.........honestly the best. Best rice pot I've had in a while......because the combination of ingredients was so good.

It said it's Modam's signature dish, made deliciously with seasonal ingredients that change each season, so I wondered what the ingredient would be — turns out it's seafood-based. As a seafood lover, I was so happy~~~~~ On top of well-cooked rice they laid hijiki seaweed, then piled it high with what looked like snails or conch!! They also added a green sauce for mixing in, which was a bit like an innard sauce or a maesaengi (seaweed) sauce, and it went really well with the seafood ingredients~

While eating the rice pot, whenever I needed protein I'd take a bite of tteokgalbi too~

At the end, they served a cold dessert that looked like milk mochi??, so it felt like I'd just had a full course meal. The rice pot especially was so good that I'd love to come back just for that! And lucky for us, it hadn't sold out even on a weekday evening~~

Interior atmosphere and the room

Lastly, the restaurant has this clean, tidy white-tone feel~ There are room tables, but there's also a room off to the side wall, so it's good for parents' first meetings too. Seems like there's a separate menu for that occasion as well~!

Besides the main dishes I had that day, there were so many other delicious-looking items too, like the assorted seafood jang (soy-marinated seafood), gamtae (seaweed) butter rice, and water dropwort bulgogi hot pot~~