Cartilage rib and basil pesto sauce with kids: Gimgol Yeontan-jip

Crunchy cartilage rib at Cheongna's Gimgol Yeontan-jip — right up my alley?

Gimgol Yeontan-jip opened not long ago but I'd already heard through the grapevine that it's the hot spot in the neighborhood. Apparently they serve all kinds of menu items beyond pork — conger eel, chicken feet, and more — so I went to try a bit of everything. Fina.lly. I made it to Gimgol Yeontan-jip! Haha.

Gimgol Yeontan-jip Cheongna Branch — full of retro charm

You can feel the retro vibe just from the storefront sign at Cheongna's <Gimgol Yeontan-jip>. The interior is fairly spacious and has a separated section that's great for small group gatherings, so it looked like a solid pick for all kinds of get-togethers. 💗

Self-serve bar and sauces — there's basil pesto

A retro vibe, cute hutgae tea, and a self-serve bar with potato salad, among other things.

There were several basic dipping sauces for the meat — salt-oil dip and ssamjang are common enough, but there was a green one in the middle too... since my palate is a bit high-end haha, that 'basil pesto' totally hit my sweet spot. Delicious. I ended up dipping everything into just that one, over and over 🎶

Liquor at ₩3,900, drinks at ₩1,900

🤍🤍🤍 In our house, a meal isn't complete without something to drink. We ordered the soda that's the perfect partner for our little one (she's a soda addict) and, for the two of us, our beloved soju — and oh, the prices are gorgeous.

• Liquor ₩3,900
• Drinks ₩1,900

It might seem like a strange ₩100 difference, but seeing liquor prices starting with a 3 again after so long made my heart flutter a little 😊

Pork belly, pork neck, cartilage rib — we ordered everything

🤍🤍🤍 Sizzle sizzle... let's cook up what we ordered. We really tried a huge range of dishes that day.

For my little one, we started with basic pork belly and pork neck, and for the grown-ups, cartilage rib, soft tofu stew, steamed egg, and more — basically everything we wanted to try, we ordered. 🫶

Here you grill the meat yourself, and luckily we had a grilling expert on our team (that's Song-i), so thanks to her, we're enjoying beautifully grilled meat. And that basil pesto sauce I mentioned earlier — it's completely irresistible. We dipped it, wrapped it in lettuce, topped it with scallion strands, and just kept eating and eating and eating 🌸

Side dishes — soft tofu stew and shrimp steamed egg

One reason I really wanted to visit this place was the rumor that the side menu is surprisingly good. So here are the drinking snacks I ordered — great companions to go with the drinks, alongside the cartilage rib and everything else.

A soft tofu stew that's small but really delivers on the seafood broth flavor, with even a piece of blue crab visible in it. 🍲

This shrimp steamed egg was full of that toasty~~ sesame oil fragrance, seasoned just right — not too salty, not too bland. I really enjoyed it. 😋

Crunchy cartilage rib — the same taste I had in Paju

And then, out of nowhere, my favorite — the crunchy, cartilage-y rib meat 🍖 I recently tried a place specializing in cartilage meat in Paju, and finding a similar flavor here in Cheongna made me so happy!

If you're craving cartilage rib, you have to come here!

Signature charcoal fried rice

<Gimgol Yeontan-jip>'s signature dish, charcoal fried rice, is super cute — you have to try it. The look is great, but honestly the seasoning on this fried rice is spot on too, haha. 🤤

Pork skin with misugaru dip

Haha... we just kept eating. With the excuse that the drinks were cheap, we were endlessly supplying side dishes. Even though we were full, we added an extra order of pork skin. 🥓

The look of it is a bit plain, but what really deserves attention is the misugaru (roasted grain powder) sauce you dip the pork skin in. It tastes like misugaru mixed with the kind of milk powder you'd stir into it — sweet, with a whole-milk-powder flavor, exactly... haha... matching that old-school taste. It's the kind of flavor older folks have probably tasted before, which made it stick to the tongue even more.

Heading out full

We ate everything... and walked out. Apparently if you join their review event you get a dried filefish snack, but we'll save that for next time 😋 Right across from Gimgol Yeontan-jip is our family's favorite pork belly spot, Sammi-jip, so I think we'll be coming back to this street even more often haha. Conger eel means Gimgol, pork belly means Sammi 🎶 huh, huh... at this point, someone give me a stake in the 4-danji food street. That's the review, done!