Jongno Korean restaurant for a mother-daughter dinner: Modam Dining

I'd had my eye on Modam Dining Gwanghwamun for a while — I was hunting for good Korean restaurants and found one that serves hanjeongsik (traditional Korean set meal) as a clean, fusion-style course. If you like walking around Deoksugung Palace and City Hall, it's also a great spot to end that stroll.

Location, parking, and hours

It's located in the D Palace building near Gwanghwamun, and the building's basement parking lot allows up to 2 hours free. There are quite a few good restaurants in the building, including Our Bakery, so I imagine it gets busier on weekdays — but when I visited, at 5pm on a Sunday, it was quiet. Hours are daily 11:00 to 22:00, with a break time from 15:00 to 17:00.

Outside and inside, dining spaces

The atmosphere changes completely once you come down to the basement level where Modam Dining is — and the corkage-free policy caught my eye too. Gatherings usually call for drinks, and being corkage-free makes it easy to bring your own bottle.

Step inside and you find an upscale dining hall — it felt almost like a gallery, with traditional Korean objects mixed in with Western-style pieces, which I liked.

Since it was just my mom and me, we'd booked a table for two in advance and were shown in. There was hemp cloth decorating the ceiling, which I stopped to admire. Little wooden ducks and other Korean-style objects were scattered around, and I thought it would also be a nice spot to host foreign guests or meet friends.

This area looked like it could handle work dinners or group gatherings, and true to its reputation as a gathering spot, there are also private rooms available for things like pre-wedding family meetings or wedding invitation parties.

Menu board, course menu

Lunch runs in the ₩20,000s and comes with everything from appetizer to dessert, which seemed perfect for a lunch gathering. Buffets are popular these days, but they can feel chaotic and the food scattered — Modam Dining, especially on the lunch menu, lets you enjoy dining in a clean, upscale setting for a price that made sense.

What we ordered — dinner abalone tteokgalbi set (1) and abalone shrimp jang & butter rice set (1)

Since we came in the evening, we ordered at dinner pricing — ₩40,000 per person each for the abalone tteokgalbi (grilled beef patty) set and the abalone shrimp jang (soy-marinated seafood) and butter rice set. We first considered Korean beef bulgogi, but since they said we could order one of each of the tteokgalbi and shrimp jang, we went with one each.

First came green mung bean porridge — not sweet, more like a nutty red bean flavor, and good for settling the stomach.

Next was a refreshing salad with yuja (citron) and what I think was omija (schisandra berry) — a clean, healthy fresh-fruit dressing that was great for waking up the appetite.

Then a nutty pine nut and sesame-flavored dressing over lotus root, cucumber, and celery — crisp with no excess moisture, a clean pairing for the meal. I'm not usually a fan of nuts, but I liked this one.

And white kimchi. Tasting like it was made in-house, it had just the right seasoning as a side during the course — cool and crisp. They say you can judge a good restaurant by its kimchi first, and this white kimchi delivered.

Then came the appetizer course — though 'appetizer' undersells it, since it arrived as a proper pre-meal dish substantial enough to fill you up before the mains. Fair warning: if you eat it all because it's delicious, you might not have room for the main course! What I especially liked was that instead of tongs for sharing, they gave us chopsticks — a small touch, but it felt more refined and clean.

Flounder ceviche. Chewy, delicious raw flounder.

They brought out two large fried shiitake mushrooms and cut them right at the table for us.

Freshly cut, it was warm and crispy, and the slightly sweet sauce on the outside paired well with the fried mushroom.

Shrimp capellini. This is what I'd been looking forward to — thin noodles like somyeon (thin wheat noodles) used in a capellini, a tasty pasta that combined Korean and Western styles.

The portion for two was just about three chopstick-fuls each — small enough to leave you wanting more, in a good way.

Along with that came side dishes: kimchi, sweet potato stems, doraji (bellflower root), and seasoned shiitake mushrooms. Aside from the kimchi, none of the sides were too salty and all were tasty. The red kimchi was a bit disappointing in flavor, but I made up for it by going back for more of the white kimchi.

Abalone tteokgalbi set and abalone shrimp butter rice

Finally, the main dishes. The abalone tteokgalbi set was lightly seasoned and not too salty, so even older adults could enjoy it comfortably. My mom, who usually complains everything's too salty, said even she didn't find this tteokgalbi salty.

Then came the single-serving abalone shrimp jang. It was interesting that along with abalone, tiger shrimp, and regular shrimp, there was also braised pork belly marinated in the mix — though this one turned out saltier than expected, so I'd recommend pairing it with the tteokgalbi!

The abalone rice is served with Isigny butter — you mix it all together in a big bowl. I thought the rice looked like a lot at first, but we cleaned the bowl.

The innards of the tiger shrimp jang were also really tasty. You cut up the wood ear mushrooms, shrimp, and meat into bite-sized pieces and mix it all together.

The tteokgalbi had that rich, straightforward beef flavor I loved — properly meaty and beefy, clean-tasting, with good satiety, and eating it alongside the abalone jang was the perfect combo!

After a leisurely meal, they cleared the dishes neatly. To finish, a cup of plum tea!

Final thoughts

With special course options like the Suraksang and Juansang for milestone occasions, Modam Dining Gwanghwamun is great for family gatherings like 60th or 70th birthdays, or pre-wedding family meetings, and I'd love to come back and try the dishes I haven't yet. The ₩20,000–30,000 range menus also work well for dates or blind dates, and I'd happily treat foreign friends here too.