Seongsu soup restaurant with terrace seats: Dwaeji Gomtang House

Hahahaha STOP!!!!!!! This is a Superchart sponsored visit, but I'm writing it because it's genuinely delicious, not because it's an ad — seriously, a hard recommend from me, write it down!

A gukbap (rice-and-soup) restaurant on the 4th floor of Musinsa Mega Store Seongsu

Dwaeji Gomtang House Musinsa Mega Store Branch is a clear pork gomtang restaurant in the 4th floor food garden of Musinsa Mega Store Seongsu, at 62 Seongsu-iro. Musinsa Mega Store Seongsu, which opened in Seongsu-dong earlier this year, has floors 1 through 4 packed with fashion and lifestyle shops, and I heard a new restaurant had opened on the 4th floor food garden where you can slurp gukbap while looking out over Seongsu-dong — so I went straight there. Its name: Dwaeji Gomtang House.

Don't just shop and leave — head up to the 4th floor and there's a food court (food garden) where you can actually eat.

Inside there are various great restaurants, and one of them is the famous clear pork gomtang place near Seongsu Station's I'Park side that I used to hit up the morning after drinking too much — now open even closer to home, in Musinsa! Honestly the back side of Songjeong-dong is a bit far and everyone flocks to Yeonmujang anyway lol. But there aren't many proper Korean restaurants around, and office workers have nowhere to eat, so I'm genuinely grateful this opened in the Musinsa store in Seongsu-dong.

This special pop-up, Dwaeji Gomtang House, is through an automatic door

and if you turn right you'll see the special pop-up store right there — so easy to spot, isn't that great?

What does the name "Hau" actually mean?

Hau is written with the Chinese characters 夏雨, meaning "summer rain," and read as Hau haha. It's an unfamiliar name in a way — Ha? U?

I looked up why it's called Hau, and it turns out it's about that refreshing feeling Koreans always talk about — cold water is refreshing, a hot bath is refreshing, a good stretch is refreshing, even drinking hot soup can feel refreshing inside — and they compared that feeling of refreshment to summer rain lol. Kind of a poetic touch, I like it.

True to the name Hau, the warm gukbap clears out your stomach, and they even sell cold naengmyeon (cold noodles) in the hot summer — so either way, summer or winter, Hau is a gomtang place you can enjoy "refreshingly."

They have a range of menu items — Hau Seaweed Soup, Hau Clear Gomtang, Hau Spicy Gomtang, and more.

Dwaeji Gomtang House uses all-Korean ingredients

The prices at Dwaeji Gomtang House Musinsa Mega Store Branch are slightly different from the menu at the Seongsu main store. Clear Gomtang Set is ₩15,000, Spicy Gomtang Set ₩16,000, Hau Seaweed Soup Set ₩17,000, Minari Tot King Mandu ₩9,000, Cold Jeyuk (half plate) ₩16,000, Herring Roe Radish Pickle ₩5,000, rice ₩1,000.

I ordered the two I always enjoy — the Clear Gomtang Set and the Spicy Gomtang Set — plus the King Mandu that's famous for its insanely juicy filling lol.

All domestic ingredients. Using 100% domestic ingredients across the board isn't easy given the cost, but pulling off that hard thing anyway is basically the condition for being a real Korean-food spot in Seongsu, right? Honestly this deserves applause.

An open kitchen shinier than my own room

I've genuinely never seen a kitchen this clean. If you've ever worked in a kitchen, you know how much psychological pressure an open kitchen puts on you — but every corner here, the neatly organized trays and scales, not a speck on them, the sink and utensils shining like they'd been polished with shoe polish lol — that's the level of spotlessness that just makes you trust the food.

It's a newly opened store so maybe that's part of it, but given that, I'm pretty sure the owner is naturally the tidy, cleanliness-in-their-bones type haha.

Using the Musinsa building's perks: free water, seating, window walls

A neat water station with purified water.

You can drink water anytime in nice paper cups,

and in front of Hau there are 2-tops, 4-tops (push them together and you could probably seat 16 lol)

and there are solo seats too. It's set up food-court style with tons of seating, so whether you're eating facing the window or sitting across from a date, there's a huge variety of seating. It's not the kind of place where you'd feel awkward finding a seat — even for someone like me who's an introvert but not quite triple-I, it works great for extroverts too.

Even sitting with your back to Hau, there's a big window wall looking out toward the Seongsu-dong café street — nice. TASTE YOUR FOOD, TASTE YOUR GARDEN.

The best seat in the house: the open-air terrace

Ever since Musinsa's food court opened, my favorite type of seating has been the outdoor terrace.

Walk past the tree in the courtyard-like center, go through the automatic door in the very back, and there's a terrace — probably the only restaurant terrace in Seongsu-dong — big enough to comfortably seat dozens of people.

White and green, the only refreshing bright spot in this concrete cityscape — imagine hitting a bowl of gomtang out here on the terrace. How happy would that make you?

It was past lunch hour so there was no one around, and honestly, very few people make it all the way up above the shopping floors of Musinsa. Why? Because there's this amazing outdoor terrace up here in Seongsu-dong where you can eat without anyone bothering you, and way too many people just don't know about it. Why? Not enough word of mouth yet.

Time to eat: how the kiosk and buzzer system works

At Dwaeji Gomtang House Musinsa Mega Store Branch, you order at the kiosk, enter your buzzer number, and get an alert — so even sitting way out on the terrace, you can easily go grab your food. Right on cue, the buzzer rings ring ring.

Since I had to take photos too, I sat close to Hau — when the buzzer rings, you walk up to the kitchen counter to grab your food yourself, kind of like a highway rest stop. There's pepper and salt at the counter in case the seasoning's off, but honestly after tasting it, you don't need either — the seasoning is spot on >_<

Ordered both the Clear Gomtang Set and Spicy Gomtang Set — done.

Clear Gomtang Set, 15,000 won: the tot (seaweed) is the kick

Hau's gomtang seems to have the rice torem-cooked (soaked/warmed in broth) so that broth flavor soaks even between the grains of rice, and according to the description, the broth is a pork stock clarified using low temperature and high pressure. The meat is sliced thin but there's actually a good amount of it. The unexpected kick in this clear gomtang is the 'tot' (a type of seaweed) — it's a clear broth flavor, but the tot really seems to help give the flavor its backbone.

It's clear to the point of being almost transparent, but one spoonful and the depth of pork flavor lingers long in the back of your throat. The broth itself glides cleanly across your tongue, and at the end that pork flavor spreads out — the aroma isn't light at all, it's remarkably vivid. Ugh, I want to eat this again right now. Great for slamming a bowl the morning after heavy drinking.

Spicy Gomtang Set, 16,000 won: the black pepper hits late

The spicy gomtang isn't so much an artificially sharp spicy flavor as it is a strong pepper flavor. Apparently there's a special chili paste mixed in, and anyone who loves spicy food will probably feel like it really clears their head.

You barely notice the pepper on the first sip, but once you swallow, the pepper-forward spiciness hits.

The side dishes are generous too, and the kkakdugi (cubed radish kimchi) and radish pickle — a kind of benchmark for a good gukbap spot — are perfectly fermented lol. Never a boring bite the whole time eating this gomtang at Hau.

Minari Tot King Mandu, 9,000 won: Seongsu-dong's best steamed dumplings?

There are a lot of mandu (dumpling) places around Seongsu-dong, and most gomtang restaurants have mandu on the menu, Hau included. Setting franchise chains aside and just judging mandu on their own merits, this is Seongsu-dong's top-tier mandu. The juice just pours out — honestly it's almost hard to eat with how much juice gushes out like a waterfall, a real testament to the quality of domestic ingredients lol.

Cleared the plate completely, of course. There's so much that it takes a while to finish it, but it must have been that good if I'm posting about it the very next day after eating lol.

Is Dwaeji Gomtang House worth a stop in Seongsu?

There are quite a few pork gomtang places in Seongsu-dong — I've been to the one that came up from Busan, the one tucked on a half-floor in an alley — but none of them really stuck in my memory. For that clean, clear kind of flavor, Hau reigns supreme. The spicy gomtang was a bit much for a spice lightweight like me, but the clean taste of the clear gomtang, the well-boiled meat, and the juice-bomb mandu are truly excellent. There aren't many restaurants around Yeonmujang-gil near Seongsu Station, so I'd recommend a proper meal here.

• A Seongsu-dong gukbap spot with parking
• Gukbap is great, but the mandu is a must-order too
• The Clear Gomtang is the best pork gukbap in Seongsu-dong
• On a nice day, enjoy the terrace seats with the Seongsu-dong view