Squid restaurant with private rooms near Seolleung Station: Haetan

I visited Haetan Seolleung Branch, a Seolleung Station favorite where you can enjoy delicious squid dishes in many different ways — the space is spacious with group seating, making it perfect for a company dinner or gathering.

How to walk to Haetan Seolleung Branch from Seolleung Station

Haetan is about 2 minutes from Seolleung Station on Line 2, so it's an easy spot to plan a meetup, and convenient to walk back to the station after a company dinner and a few drinks.

As expected of a popular Seolleung Station restaurant, even on a Monday visit the place was nearly full.

Private rooms, group tables and the self-bar: how Haetan works for a group dinner

Haetan Seolleung Branch has room-style spaces on both sides of the main hall, which looked great for company dinners and group gatherings. Sure enough, there were lots of office workers there for a drink after work.

There's a self-bar in the center of the restaurant where you can freely help yourself to various side dishes and vegetables. They also said rice is refillable for free during lunch hours, so it seemed like a popular lunch spot for office workers near Seolleung Station.

Haetan Seolleung Branch menu and prices

This is the menu at Haetan, a Seolleung Station restaurant. Haetan specializes in squid dishes, so you can try a wide variety of squid preparations. I ordered Haetan's signature dish, the Haetan Han-sang set, made up of stone-plate squid, half a plate of fried squid, flowering pork belly, and seasoned squid salad.

What comes in the Haetan Han-sang set

The generous Haetan Han-sang set arrived.

The portions are huge and it looks really delicious.

With food this good, I couldn't resist a drink, so I ordered Jipyeong makgeolli to go with it.

Stone-plate stir-fried squid

First up is what you could call the main dish — stir-fried squid on a stone plate. The squid sizzling away on the hot stone plate makes your mouth water.

The combination of the addictively sweet-and-spicy sauce and chewy squid is total rice-thief territory. This stone-plate squid is also a great drinking snack.

Marbled pork belly suyuk, seasoned squid salad and white kimchi

The flowering pork belly was nice because it's placed on a burner and kept warm with steam.

The ratio of fat to lean meat was good, so it was tender, soft, and delicious.

The sweet and tangy seasoned squid salad, with crunchy vegetables and chewy squid, is delicious eaten on its own, and pairs well with the flowering pork belly, cutting through its richness. This alone could get you through a few bottles of makgeolli.

The white kimchi was very refreshing, and eating it when your mouth felt spicy or greasy cleaned everything right up.

Piling the flowering pork belly and stir-fried squid on top of this refreshing white kimchi and eating them together was a fantastic combination.

Fried squid

This fried squid is massive and impressive just to look at. The batter looks crispy just from the photo, and the pieces are large, so the portion was generous too.

Haetan's fried squid, a Seolleung Station favorite, isn't just thick batter — it's properly packed with thick squid.

It was crispy and tasty dipped in soy sauce, but dipping it in the sweet-and-spicy stone-plate squid sauce made it taste like dipping fried squid in a delicious tteokbokki (spicy rice cake) sauce — a really great match.

Soft-serve ice cream for dessert

Haetan, a Seolleung Station favorite, has a soft-serve ice cream machine, so I could finish the meal with ice cream for dessert.

My mouth felt a bit heavy after eating so much pork belly and stir-fried squid, but the cool, sweet soft-serve ice cream refreshed and cleaned everything up perfectly — a great finish.

Haetan Seolleung Branch is a place where you can enjoy squid — pricier these days — in many delicious ways, and I'd recommend it both as a lunch spot near Seolleung Station and as a venue for company dinners and group gatherings.