Cheongju Chinese restaurant with kids: mini menbosha, Gyodong

A review of "Gyodong Jjamppong," a Chinese restaurant that's a local favorite in Yongjeong-dong!

By the way, dad's pick was the jjamppong (spicy seafood noodle soup) and it was really, REALLY good! It's meat-based, so the flavor is super rich! Absolutely recommend it as a hangover jjamppong.

Where is Gyodong Jjamppong Yongjeong Branch, and what are its hours?

• Address: 653 Yongjeong-dong, Sangdang-gu, Cheongju, Chungbuk, South Korea
• Hours: 10:20–21:20 (Sat–Sun until 20:20)
• Reservations and delivery available / Parking in the alley

By the way, on the sign it says "free if it's not tasty!" — I'd been curious about this place every time I passed by. I kept wondering, how confident do you have to be to write that? So I was happy to finally visit 🫶🏻

Gyodong Jjamppong Yongjeong-dong traces back to the original Gangneung Gyodong Jjamppong, known for a rich, spicy broth with an amazing smoky wok flavor. This was my first visit, and it really was delicious!!

What three of us ordered at Gyodong Jjamppong, and what it cost

From the Gyodong Jjamppong menu, since it was me, dad, and my niece, we ordered jjamppong, fried rice, mini sweet-and-sour pork, and mini mandu-bosha!

• Jjamppong: ₩9,000
• Fried rice: ₩9,000
• Mini glutinous sweet-and-sour pork: ₩7,000 (9 pork pieces + 2 fried dumplings)
• Mini mandu-bosha: ₩7,000 (2 mandu-bosha + 2 fried dumplings)

Besides the main menu there were also dishes great as drinking snacks!! Oh, I didn't notice those — gotta try them next time!!

I came in the early evening, and by the time we were leaving (around 6:30) there were a lot of dine-in customers and a lot of delivery orders too!! Oh, I was the only one who didn't know this was a Yongjeong-dong local favorite, haha.

The 7,000 won mini menu: ultra-mini sweet-and-sour pork and menbosha

The mandu-bosha (stuffed fried bread pocket) and sweet-and-sour pork came out first! Both have mini versions at ₩7,000 each, great if you want to try a variety of dishes!

My niece happily ate the mini mandu-bosha, while dad and I picked the sweet-and-sour pork! Haha.

Freshly fried sweet-and-sour pork,, 🫶🏻 how could this not be delicious!! It's called glutinous sweet-and-sour pork, but to me it felt somewhere between old-school sweet-and-sour pork and the glutinous rice-batter kind!! Chewy yet crispy?!

Maybe because the oil is good, the frying was clean, and the batter was thin with about 90% meat, which made it even better!

My niece's pick was the mandu-bosha! Crispy to the point of crunchy with the chili sauce, so delicious that even I, with my toddler-level palate, was won over too 🫶🏻 And since everything tastes best hot, I recommend eating it right when it comes out .. hehe.

In the end dad and I ordered a beer, haha. Both of us prefer having a drink alongside good food,, hehe.

Fried rice with no heat: why my 8-year-old nephew cleaned the plate

And then the jjamppong and fried rice arrived! ❤️ The visuals are seriously great, right?

The fried rice portion was really generous, and even the jjamppong broth served alongside it was loaded with ingredients!!

Look at that glossy, perfectly fried, not-mushy texture,, ahh, this is textbook fried rice! By the way it's not spicy at all, so it's great for kids too!! (My niece is 8 and she ate it happily)

Meat-based jjamppong broth, with the mussels already shelled

And the jjamppong that both dad and I loved so much! It's meat-based so it has a really rich, deep flavor!

The portion is massive too!!! Even dad was surprised when he lifted up the noodles with his chopsticks, haha.

The longer we ate, the more the broth soaked into the noodles, so it got even tastier as we went!! What I liked best was that the mussels came fully out of their shells already — usually picking shells apart takes time, but here it was all done for us, so convenient!!

The day the three of us cleaned out the fried rice, jjamppong, sweet-and-sour pork, and mandu-bosha down to the last bite! Every dish had that classic, textbook Chinese-restaurant flavor, and it was a satisfying meal! If you're looking for Chinese food as a Yongjeong-dong local favorite, I recommend "Gyodong Jjamppong"!!