Unlimited banchan bar at Songdo Korean restaurant Bomseol, Incheon

If you want a healthy, hearty Korean set meal with the family

My husband and I were craving something healthy and filling, so we came to Bomseol, a hanjeongsik (Korean set-menu) restaurant in Songdo, Incheon. It had everything from refined dishes older folks would enjoy to easy options for kids, making it a great spot for a family meal.

Where is Bomseol Songdo International City, and is there parking?

Bomseol is in the S5 City commercial building, Building A. It takes up a large space on the first floor, so it was easy to find, and the underground lot offers 2 hours of free parking, which made driving there convenient. It's open daily from 11 AM to 9 PM, so you can come for lunch or dinner, and it's a fairly new hanjeongsik restaurant.

Is Bomseol a comfortable place for a family meal?

Inside, Bomseol felt clean and tidy overall. There were plenty of 4-person tables as well as group seating, and the tables were spaced generously apart so we didn't have to worry about neighboring tables — great for a relaxed family meal. The tables themselves were wide, so even with several dishes out there was never a sense of running out of room, and the sunlight streaming in made the whole space feel pretty.

There was also a section on one side separated by partitions, giving it a room-like feel — a group seating area that fits up to 12 people. It's not a fully enclosed room, but with enough separation, it seemed good for family gatherings or larger groups eating together.

What's on the Bomseol self-serve bar?

Bomseol's big advantage is being a hanjeongsik restaurant with a self-serve bar! You can freely refill your favorite basic banchan (side dishes), and there was also food that wasn't even part of our order.

Not only could we refill the basic banchan, there were also snack foods like jjolmyeon (chewy cold noodles), tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes) and fritters. The moment my husband spotted these, he brought back tteokbokki, sweet potato fritters and jjolmyeon and happily dug in. It seems like it would be especially useful for families dining with young kids.

There was pumpkin porridge as a kind of appetizer, barley rice for anyone who can't eat white rice for health reasons, bibimbap ingredients ready at the self-serve bar, and even Korean sweets and tea for dessert — so we could handle dessert in the same spot.

There was also a variety of wrap vegetables — lettuce, perilla leaves, cabbage, kale and more — and even with vegetable prices being sky-high these days, they were unlimited refill, which made this feel like a hanjeongsik restaurant that's great for families to enjoy generously.

Bomseol set menus and prices, from 18,000 to 56,000 won

Bomseol's set menus are built around stone pot rice and cheonggukjang (fermented soybean stew), paired with a variety of main dishes such as bossam (boiled pork wraps), grilled fish, seasoned crab, or beef bulgogi hot pot. With prices ranging from the ₩18,000 Deulbap Set to the ₩56,000 Guibin Set, there's a range of compositions to choose from depending on your purpose or taste, which I thought was a real plus.

Eating the 23,000 won Bomseol Set for two

We ordered the Bomseol Set (₩23,000 per person) for two. It's a spread with stone pot rice and cheonggukjang as the base, plus seasoned geumge crab, bossam, and grilled mackerel. The food didn't take long to arrive, and as each dish was set down one by one, the table filled up fast.

The well-cooked stone pot rice was topped with sweet pumpkin and ginkgo nuts, and we got to finish it off with sungnyung (scorched rice tea) at the end, which was a nice touch. The cheonggukjang came already simmered and ready to eat — rich, deep and nutty, very much like old-school cheonggukjang. I thought older generations would especially love it.

Side dishes included baby potatoes, bracken fern, stir-fried kimchi, kimchi, jellyfish salad, and pickled garlic scapes, along with wrap vegetables and ssamjang (dipping sauce) to go with the bossam. Two kinds of jeon (Korean pancakes) came out, one per person, plus japchae (stir-fried glass noodles), so there was plenty of variety for two people. And my favorite, gaji tangsu (sweet and sour eggplant), also showed up — crispy texture with plump eggplant, so good.

The mains came with both meat and seafood, so my meat-loving husband focused on the bossam while I, a seafood person, went for the crab and grilled fish, and in between we both kept grabbing snacks from the self-serve bar — nice that we could each eat to our own taste. I don't usually go for seasoned raw crab, but Bomseol's version wasn't fishy at all, and the spicy-sweet sauce was seriously delicious. That one stuck with me.

With unlimited wrap vegetables too, there was fun in wrapping and eating everything, and overall the seasoning wasn't harshly salty, sweet, or spicy — closer to clean, healthy Korean home cooking. That made me think it would be a really good family meal spot for parents, elders, and kids alike.

Is Bomseol Songdo worth a visit?

With its wide variety of dishes, spacious and comfortable layout for family meals, and available parking, Bomseol was a refined hanjeongsik restaurant in Songdo, Incheon — one where the self-serve bar let us eat generously and however we liked, whether dining as a family or with a larger group.