Yeongdeungpo tteokbokki restaurant with unlimited self bar: Pan Fan

Tteokbokki is one of those foods you really have to eat every so often, right? One day, I suddenly had the biggest craving for delicious instant tteokbokki, so I looked up good tteokbokki spots around Yeongdeungpo and headed to Pan Fan.

It is already fairly well known around Yeongdeungpo and Mullae as a great instant-tteokbokki spot, but I was especially curious because it has a signature tteokbokki you do not see at other places.

On top of that, I heard that ordering tteokbokki gives you access to an unlimited self bar with everything from fried snacks to ramyeon, jjolmyeon, glass noodles, rice-ball ingredients, and fried-rice ingredients, so I went straight over. After trying it myself, I was even more satisfied because Pan Fan’s signature tteokbokki could be enjoyed in so many tasty, wholesome ways. 🥰

Pan Fan location and hours

Pan Fan is on the first floor at 143 Yeongdeungpo-ro, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. It is about an eight-minute walk from Yeongdeungpo-gu Office Station and around 10 minutes from Mullae Station. That makes it a decent place to continue a date around Yeongdeungpo or Mullae before or after a meal. It also opens at 11 a.m. on weekdays, so it seems like a good fit for anyone looking for lunch in Mullae.

• Monday 11:00–21:00 / break time 14:30–17:00
• Saturday 12:00–20:00 / break time 15:00–16:30
• Regular closing day: every Sunday

A clean, comfortable instant-tteokbokki restaurant

Pan Fan uses red throughout its exterior, so it immediately feels like a tteokbokki place. Inside, though, it was decorated neatly around a white color scheme, a little different from the outside. I personally expected an instant-tteokbokki place to feel somewhat bustling, but the restaurant was cleaner and more comfortable than I expected, which I liked.

Seating is mainly tables for two and four, so it had a nice atmosphere for visiting with friends or having instant tteokbokki on a Mullae date.

Pan Fan’s mojeoban tteokbokki menu

What I was most curious about at Pan Fan was the mojeoban tteokbokki 💚.

Along with standard instant tteokbokki, Pan Fan has signature dishes such as Wando mom (mojeoban seaweed) tteokbokki, Wando stone laver Pan Fan tteokbokki, and Wando rock seaweed Pan Fan tteokbokki.

All of Pan Fan’s tteokbokki uses a broth made with mojeoban, a seaweed from the ocean, which is said to create a deep, mellow savoriness unlike regular tteokbokki.

• Wando mom (mojeoban) tteokbokki: ₩22,000 for two
• Wando stone laver Pan Fan tteokbokki: ₩20,000 for two
• Wando rock seaweed Pan Fan tteokbokki: ₩19,000 for two
• Brisket tteokbokki ₩22,500, Pan Fan tteokbokki ₩18,000, black-bean-sauce tteokbokki ₩18,500

And the all-you-can-eat self bar 🤤 is something you cannot leave out at Pan Fan.

The self bar is free when you order tteokbokki, and it had far more variety than I expected.

There were fried items including vegetable fritters and spicy fish-cake fritters; add-ins such as ramyeon, jjolmyeon, and flat glass noodles; and ingredients for making rice balls and fried rice. At a tteokbokki place, the bill keeps rising as you add one noodle and one fried snack, but here you can take as much as you want, which was a real draw.

Adding extras to brisket mojeoban tteokbokki

We ordered two portions of brisket mojeoban tteokbokki. I had also seen many reviews saying the gim-mari was delicious, so we added handmade gim-mari, and since I like tteokbokki with boiled eggs, we ordered eggs too.

Before the tteokbokki arrived, we first picked up the fried snacks and add-ins we wanted from the self bar.

A little later, our tteokbokki arrived, and it was quite a generous spread at a glance.

More than anything, it was a look I had never seen before: a large, round clump of mojeoban was placed right on top of the tteokbokki. Once it starts bubbling on the burner, you can loosen the mojeoban little by little and mix it into the sauce.

The basic tteokbokki already included plenty of ingredients, including fried dumplings, ramyeon noodles, and fried fish cake, and we added the jjolmyeon and flat glass noodles from the self bar too. Honestly, at first I wondered whether mojeoban would go well with tteokbokki. But after one bite, it blended in much more naturally than I expected.

Maybe it was Pan Fan’s mojeoban broth, but the sauce had a deep, mellow savoriness. Tteokbokki can often taste intensely spicy, sweet, and punchy, but Pan Fan kept that familiar tteokbokki flavor while adding a clean umami note from the seaweed.

The wheat rice cakes were especially chewy and went well with the savory sauce. The mojeoban itself did not have an overpoweringly strong aroma; rather than getting in the way of the tteokbokki, it lightly added texture and umami, so it was easy to eat without feeling heavy.

Eating it with the brisket added the rich, nutty flavor of meat for another dimension, too. Personally, I really liked the combination of brisket, chewy wheat rice cakes, and mojeoban broth. I soaked the fried snacks from the self bar thoroughly in the tteokbokki sauce, and mashed the boiled eggs into the sauce as well—this is exactly the fun of instant tteokbokki, right? 😆

The handmade gim-mari was worth ordering separately

And I was really glad we ordered the handmade gim-mari separately.

It looked distinctly different from typical store-bought gim-mari from the shape alone.

When I cut the gim-mari, which looked like a long gimbap (seaweed rice roll), with scissors, it was packed with plump glass noodles inside.

One bite gave you the nutty taste of seaweed, the chewy texture of glass noodles, and the crisp coating—it was delicious. Better still, lightly dipping it in the tteokbokki sauce let the sweet-spicy seasoning soak in, making it even tastier. If you visit Pan Fan, I would recommend ordering the handmade gim-mari at least once.

Extra vegetables and self-bar rice balls

As we ate, I wanted a little more cabbage, so we added vegetables too. Extra vegetables cost ₩2,000, and out came a mountain of them. When we added the vegetables and broth to cook again, it honestly looked like a whole new tteokbokki had arrived. 😂

While waiting for the vegetables to cook, we made rice balls with ingredients from the self bar this time. We added a little stir-fried kimchi, flat glass noodles, stir-fried sliced fried tofu, fried enoki mushrooms, sweet corn, dried persimmon powder, and rice, then added sesame oil and perilla oil and gently shaped everything together with plastic gloves.

I took a bite of the rice ball we made ourselves and was surprised by how delicious it was. The ingredients were sweet and salty, each with a different texture, yet they worked so well together. It was fun to make at the free self bar and tasted good too, so I definitely recommend making a rice ball yourself.

Of course, it was essential to settle my stomach bit by bit with carbonated drinks between bites of tteokbokki. 😅 This dieter ate tteokbokki but finished the drinks with Zero Coke and sparkling water.

When you want instant tteokbokki in Yeongdeungpo

After eating at Pan Fan, I felt comfortably full rather than overly stuffed and weighed down by intense food. Above all, at other instant-tteokbokki restaurants, it is easy for costs to climb as you add noodles, fried snacks, and fried rice one by one, while Pan Fan has the clear advantage of letting you use a wide range of ingredients freely at its complimentary self bar.

The slightly unusual ingredient of mojeoban also made it a different experience from the instant tteokbokki I had eaten before. It would be a good choice not only when you want tteokbokki for lunch or dinner in Yeongdeungpo, but also when you are looking for a meal during a Mullae date or want to enjoy some casual bunsik (Korean snack food) with friends. I especially recommend Pan Fan to instant-tteokbokki fans, anyone who loves adding lots of different extras, or people planning a Mullae date.