Freshly boiled jokbal at 2pm in Sunae-dong, Seongnam: Wangchang Jokbal

I'm a newlywed duck hunting for a good meal with my husband every weekend! 🦆 Today I've got a lively visit report from 'Wangchang Jokbal,' a Sunae-dong, Seongnam favorite we tried for a late weekend lunch after running errands in the area.

If you want to enjoy freshly made, piping hot jokbal (boiled pork trotter) privately without the usual parking stress near Sunae Station's restaurant alley, today's post will help a lot!

Can you even park near Sunae Station's restaurant alley?

The Sunae-dong restaurant alley has plenty of great spots, but parking is often such a hassle that it can make you hesitate to visit. At Wangchang Jokbal, you just use the underground parking at the 'Daedeok Glory Building.' The building itself is so large that the parking lot felt spacious and comfortable even on a weekend, almost quiet.

Booth-style 4-tops and a 6-top, a private kind of place

This is the exterior of Wangchang Jokbal, a Sunae-dong favorite located on the first floor. Inside, the seating is mostly 4-person tables with high partitions, so we were free from other diners' conversations. It felt like a great spot for family gatherings or dates without any noise interruption.

There's also a 6-person table, which looked good for larger groups like company dinners or gatherings. On top of that, there was a sink for washing hands before wrapping the meat in lettuce, and the chopsticks were prepared hygienically — small touches like these showed the restaurant's care for guests throughout the space.

The magic of a 2pm weekend opening rush: jokbal fresh out of the pot

Here's the menu and prices at Wangchang Jokbal, a Sunae-dong jokbal favorite. There are two types of jokbal, original and spicy, each available in medium and large. You can get half-and-half jokbal for an extra ₩2,000. Side dishes like makguksu (buckwheat noodles), ramen soup, and various jeon (pan-fried dishes) are also well covered.

My husband and I visited as a couple, and since there's no small size, we ordered the medium original jokbal. We went around 2pm on a weekend for a late lunch, and it turned out this was exactly when a fresh batch had just been boiled. Watching a steady stream of delivery riders come and go while we sat there, I became convinced: 'ah, this is really a local delivery favorite.'

Melt-in-your-mouth lean meat and the special eoriguljeot

Usually you need to eat jokbal's lean meat together with the fat so it isn't dry, but surprisingly, at Wangchang Jokbal even the lean meat alone was soft and tender — it really surprised me.

Tenderness you can see just from picking it up with chopsticks... I'm not sure if it's because it was freshly out or just how the jokbal itself is, but I think next time I need to time my visit to catch it fresh again, ㅠㅠ.

The basic side dishes included steamed egg and a doenjang (soybean paste) soup with eolgali (young cabbage), and overall the basic table setting and soup were neat and tasted great.

Especially the eoriguljeot (spicy salted oyster relish) was this place's own kick! Topping the tender jokbal with spicy, salty eoriguljeot made the savory flavor explode...

We wondered how the two of us would finish a medium portion, but the side dishes were so tasty and paired so well with the jokbal that somehow we ended up eating it all... haha.

Verdict: rediscovering tender lean meat

We'd worried the portion might be too much, but the meat quality itself was excellent and the side dish skills were so good that my husband and I cleared everything down to the bone.

If you're looking for real jokbal in Sunae-dong, Seongnap — chewy and tender with zero gamey smell — you should definitely visit. My husband and I already decided that next time we'll come as a group of three and completely demolish (?) a medium portion along with a cool bowl of makguksu!