Jung-gu Korean restaurant for pork jowl and mushroom rice: Tanbaek

This was written after receiving sponsorship, but it was so delicious that every word is 100% sincere.

My husband and I came on a weekday evening, and to give you the conclusion first: this was the best food I’ve had around Seodaemun. Truly, not a single thing was bad, and every dish was so clean and beautifully put together that I felt happy the entire time. It has been such a long time since I found a restaurant I genuinely want to bring my parents to!!

Getting to Tanbaek and the dinner wait

Tanbaek is about a 10-minute walk from Exit 5 of Seodaemun Station. You might think, Is 10 minutes a little far? But the trees and stone walls along the way are so pretty that it did not feel far at all. If anything, the walk there already had such a nice atmosphere that I got a little excited. It definitely passes as a date course!

We visited as two people around 7 p.m. on a weekday, without a reservation! We could not walk in immediately, but after waiting about five minutes, we sat at a first-floor bar table. Five minutes is honestly almost too embarrassing to call a wait, so dinner was quite manageable. I heard weekday lunch waits are long, though. If you are planning lunch, I recommend reserving. A reservation also gets you a coupon for two kimchi dumplings, haha.

I could not have them this time, but next time I am absolutely reserving and getting the kimchi dumplings too. Please eat them for me! It already seemed famous as a great restaurant, and even at dinner it was busy. Owner, become even more famous. No, please stop becoming more famous.

It would be great for a City Hall Station dinner date, and I also recommend it for a post-engagement-family-meeting meal near City Hall Station!

The interior was so clean and orderly, and the open kitchen made me feel reassured about hygiene too.

The kalguksu and warm pork menu

Tanbaek’s menu included beef broth kalguksu (knife-cut noodles), warm pork, perilla seed kalguksu, soy mixed kalguksu, spicy beef kalguksu, kimchi dumplings, mushroom rice, and beef hot pot.

And they sell single cups of makgeolli (Korean rice wine), too. It seemed like a pairing that would go so well with the menu!

I like trying a restaurant’s signature dish, so I had planned to get the beef broth kalguksu, you know? I even resisted this tempting message from the owner... but the reviews were overflowing with testimonial-style praise for the soy mixed kalguksu.

I wondered how delicious it had to be for everyone to be crying over it, so I tried the soy mixed kalguksu! And for protein, we ordered the warm pork + mushroom rice too. This was the best decision I made all day yesterday.

The warm pork and mushroom rice combination

Just insanely gorgeous.

Crazy, right?

First of all, the warm pork was not just boiled pork—it was pork jowl.

When you think of boiled pork, you usually picture tender, moist meat, right? This was moist, but it also had the distinctive crunchy, almost crisp bite of pork jowl here and there, which made it even more delicious.

And what I really loved was that it had absolutely no meat smell even after it cooled. You know how some boiled-pork dishes develop that smell as soon as they cool a little? Tanbaek’s warm pork stayed clean-tasting to the very last bite.

Another reason this warm pork was special was the minari-like chamnamul (Korean parsley) salad served with it. The meat itself was delicious, but the refreshing sweetness, almost like a yuzu sauce, came through all at once. The combination was so clean that it gave you no chance to feel greasy.

Personally, I really want you to try this three-way combination: chamnamul, pork jowl, and wasabi.

I thought the mushroom rice would just be rice to eat with the meat, but the grains were moist and the mushrooms had such a nice chew—it felt like a very light abalone pot rice. And the little roe-like topping beside the pork was slightly spicy. Eat that with the mushroom rice and it is heaven.

What does the soy mixed kalguksu taste like?

Everyone, seriously eat this!!!! I worked in Yeouido and have gone through countless bowls of Jinjujip’s kongguksu (soybean noodle soup), but personally, I preferred Tanbaek’s soy mixed kalguksu! Of course, it is a completely different dish from Jinjujip’s kongguksu. While Jinjujip is rich and weighty soybean noodle soup, Tanbaek’s soy mixed kalguksu felt a little like perilla oil mixed noodles topped with nutty soy cream?

Once you mix it, the soy cream coats every noodle. It is a little like thick cream pasta and a little like nutty mixed noodles, yet it still feels distinctly Korean. It was truly a flavor I had never had before—I was like, wow, what is this? The nuttiness of the beans comes through, but rather than being only soft and rich, it has a lightly salty flavor, so I did not get tired of it at all. The noodles were springy, as kalguksu noodles should be, and clung beautifully to the sauce. This was honestly a dish I had never eaten anywhere else. I was torn between it and the beef broth kalguksu, but it would have been a disaster if I had not ordered the soy mixed kalguksu. Please try it.

Just when it starts to feel a little rich, cleanse it all away with kimchi. The kimchi was so good too.

Neat Korean food I want to return for

I had such delicious food for the first time in ages. A place serving truly distinctive dishes, incredibly well! For anyone looking for neat Korean food near City Hall Station or a great Seodaemun date restaurant, everything was so delicious that I will absolutely be back.