Chowol-eup Korean restaurant: squid duruchigi for two, Oneuldo Utja

A dinner stop at Oneuldo Utja Chowol on the way home from Gonjiam

Looking for somewhere to eat on the drive home from Gonjiam, I ended up at Oneuldo Utja Chowol. Even the sign gave off good-restaurant energy. I'd never been before, but the menu felt so much like home cooking that before I even walked in, I had a feeling I was about to eat something delicious.

Oneuldo Utja Chowol location, hours and parking

• Location: 43-1 Sansu-ro, Chowol-eup, Gwangju-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 1st floor
• Hours: Mon–Sat 11:00–22:00 (last order 20:50) / Sun 11:00–21:00 (last order 19:50)
• Parking: Available

There's parking right in front of the restaurant, so I parked easily and went in.

Inside Oneuldo Utja Chowol and its self-serve side dish bar

The interior is bright and clean overall, with nothing extra cluttering the space. It felt like a comfortable place to eat without any of that crowded feeling. The little yellow smiley-face frames on the wall gave off a cheerful, friendly vibe, and true to the restaurant's name, the atmosphere made you want to eat happily. The tables were spaced well apart too, so there was no sense of being cramped.

There's a self-serve corner, so you can help yourself to more side dishes if you run out, and get extra rice too.

Hard at work making sotbap.

What we ordered: squid duruchigi for two, sotbap and jumbo egg roll

The menu is simple: kimchi jjigae, pork duruchigi, squid duruchigi, squid-pork duruchigi, jumbo egg roll, and sotbap. We ordered squid duruchigi for two (₩27,000), two sotbap (₩2,000 each) and jumbo egg roll (₩10,000). Spicy squid duruchigi, warm rice, and soft egg roll — home cooking made by someone else, and I couldn't wait.

The basic table setting.

How does the squid duruchigi taste?

The squid duruchigi came out first, piled generously with bean sprouts, enoki mushrooms, and minari (water dropwort).

There was plenty of squid in it too, cut into easy-to-eat pieces.

The squid was tasty, but the vegetables in duruchigi are always so good too.

While the squid duruchigi was still simmering, the piping-hot sotbap arrived. The moment I opened the lid, a nutty rice smell rose up, and the rice glistened with a shiny coat. The grains were moist yet fluffy — the kind of rice that makes you understand why people say plain rice alone can be delicious.

The jumbo egg roll that cools down the spice

Since squid duruchigi is a spicy dish, we also ordered the jumbo egg roll, and I'm glad we did. Eating a bite of the soft, mild egg roll in between bites of the spicy stuff softened the heat nicely and complemented it well. The egg roll seems like a great dish to have on hand when eating something too spicy for too long gets a bit much. For people like us who like spicy food but can't handle too much of it, the jumbo egg roll wasn't optional — it was essential.

The spicy, savory sauce was soaked well into the squid, and eating it with rice was so good. The squid wasn't chewy in a bad way — it had a springy texture that got more flavorful the more you chewed. In particular, the onions and various vegetables stir-fried together with it made the texture much richer and the flavor more varied than squid alone would have been.

Sotbap and the scorched-rice finish

For a dish like this, sotbap really does suit it better than plain rice. Piling the spicy squid duruchigi onto the warm rice made for a really good combination of spicy sauce and rice. The more rice I ate, the more delicious the duruchigi sauce seemed to taste, so I kept going. Before I knew it, I'd finished a whole bowl. Mixing rice into the leftover sauce would probably have been delicious too, but I was too full to do it. Maybe that's exactly why there was rice at the self-serve bar.

The highlight of sotbap has to be the sungnyung (scorched rice tea)! After scooping out the rice, I poured in warm water, waited a bit, and then ate it — the toasty, nutty flavor was really good. No matter how full you are, there's always room for sungnyung. Finishing the meal with warm sungnyung left me feeling comfortably full, right down to the core.

Is Oneuldo Utja Chowol worth a stop? Who it suits

Tonight's dinner was especially good thanks to the combination of spicy squid duruchigi and hot sotbap, and the egg roll on top made it even more filling. I ended up eating a bit too much rice and was slightly caught off guard, but it was delicious, so I'll call that a win haha. The dishes at Oneuldo Utja Chowol all pair so well with rice that this place comes to mind whenever I want a truly filling meal. If you're in Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do craving real food, or in the mood for something spicy, this is a good place to visit. If I come back to Gwangju, Gyeonggi-do again, I'd like to try the kimchi jjigae at Oneuldo Utja Chowol too.