Solo drinking with lemon gin at Sinnonhyeon oden bar Odeng Osaek

With the weather cooling down, I've naturally been craving warm oden broth — so after getting an eyelash perm done near Gangnam Station that turned out great, I headed off happily to a Gangnam oden bar for some solo drinking, haha.

It's an oden spot I'd wanted to try for ages, and going there was finally so, so good... They even gave me a fish-shaped glass through their review event — total win — and I found a bottle of Sunhari Lemon Gin there, the first time I'd ever seen it sold by the bottle, so I drank it with real enthusiasm!

Where is Odeng Osaek Gangnam Station Branch, and what are its hours?

Odeng Osaek Gangnam Station Branch / Mon–Fri, Sun 16:00–02:00 / Sat 16:00–04:00 / 285m from Exit 7 of Sinnonhyeon Station / Takeout, reservations, group seating, Wi-Fi, separate restrooms, parking

Odeng Osaek is a Gangnam oden bar you can reach within a 10-minute walk from both Exit 7 of Sinnonhyeon Station and Exit 10 of Gangnam Station. It's tucked a little into a back alley, but the place was almost fully booked with customers!

This Gangnam oden bar takes real pride in using what it calls the most expensive fish cakes in Korea — not just among Gangnam oden bars. Instead of bulking up with flour, they use authentic Busan-style fish cakes with over 90% fish content, at surprisingly good prices.

And it's not just the oden that's cheap. From Sunday to Thursday until 7pm, there's a Cass draft beer event for ₩2,900, plus a handmade chicken nanban + 2 Suntory drafts combo for ₩28,500.

Drinking alone at 8pm on a weekday: the bar counter at Odeng Osaek

I visited around 8pm on a weekday, and this Sinnonhyeon bar was so popular it was practically full. I'd imagined a quiet, late-night-diner kind of mood for solo drinking, but I was a little thrown by how many people were there — still, I pulled myself together and settled into a relaxed bar seat looking out onto the street to start my Sinnonhyeon solo drinking session ^_^

The complimentary starter snack was tuna mayo and crackers! Honestly great on their own — the tuna mayo was so soft and moist. I could probably finish a whole bottle of soju on this alone (?)

Later, fresh wasabi came with another dish I ordered, so I mixed it in and made my own tuna-wasabi-mayo — self-made and deeply satisfying.

The Odeng Osaek menu and drink lineup

The Odeng Osaek menu and prices — I kept flipping and more pages kept coming. It's a Gangnam oden bar, but besides the handmade oden there was tebasaki, gambas, fried horse mackerel, the new yangkkochi-style chicken cartilage skewers, and even popping-candy bingsu. You can get oden as a beef tendon stew or as a set, but you can also pick single pieces à la carte, so for my solo drinking session I ordered a bunch of individual oden pieces plus a few simple snacks, haha.

There were also great dessert-style bites like cheese balls, chicken breast caesar salad, gold pineapple, and monaka ice cream sandwiches!

They also had omija (schisandra berry), apricot, and dare (kiwi berry) makgeolli varieties, plus Terra, Kloud, Kelly beers, and even a 1-liter beer(!), sake by the glass, boxed and bottled sake, tokkuri sets, highballs, Cheongha, and bottled Sunhari Lemon Gin — such a flashy drinks lineup that I thought, wow, this Sinnonhyeon bar is really serious about alcohol, haha.

Since they had their own signature Odeng Osaek-ju, I got curious and ordered it. Whenever I go to a cocktail bar I always order the signature cocktail, so a drink you can only get there always pulls me in! Odeng Osaek-ju is a 13%, 300ml house traditional liquor with a faint chrysanthemum aroma, similar in feel to Baekseju, and I chose it because I heard the alcohol smell was mild!

Four handmade fish cakes, each with its own broth

They brought out my oden and drinks quickly! Since they make you a fresh new pot of broth whenever you order oden, it's much more hygienic than a typical oden bar. Mine was the mild broth, which was rich and clean-tasting. There's also apparently a spicy special-recipe broth available separately!

• Cheese handmade oden ₩4,000
• Shrimp dumpling skewer ₩3,500
• Shinodamaki (yubu roll), 2 pieces ₩2,500
• Gamaboko (thin steamed oden) ₩2,500
• Odeng Osaek-ju ₩6,000

(Everything for my solo drinking is mine, all mine) This was my first round of ordering, haha. Even though it's all à la carte oden, picking four different kinds ended up looking almost like an oden hot pot, don't you think?

Odeng Osaek's handmade fish cakes aren't the common kind mixed with lots of flour — with over 90% fish content, these Busan handmade fish cakes had a chewy, springy texture along with real fish flavor.

There was also a portable burner underneath, so I could keep enjoying the warm broth the whole time — such a nice touch!

Cheese handmade oden, 4,000 won

This is the cheese oden. Cheese was packed all through it, so it was savory with real cheese flavor. It was firmer and chewier than I expected, and pretty big too, so it took a while to work through.

Shrimp dumpling skewer, 3,500 won

This is the shrimp dumpling skewer — an appealing, unusual combination of shrimp balls and dumplings threaded alternately. Regular oden skewers are tasty too, but this kind of skewer felt fresh and different!

The chewy shrimp balls were tasty, but these cute little dumplings were the real standout. Dipped in the broth, they got soft and moist like hot-pot dumplings :)

Gamaboko and yubu rolls at Odeng Osaek

Fish cakes are usually fried, so I got curious about gamaboko, described as steamed. It was thin, chewy, and clean-tasting, with a very soft texture! Definitely less oily than typical oden.

The yubu roll comes packed with vegetables. It's rolled up like gimbap (seaweed rice roll), so cute and pretty just to look at — I had to order it, and it was packed with vegetables and tasted great too! If you go to Odeng Osaek, definitely make sure to order this.

Moist on the outside, with vegetables that stayed pleasantly crunchy inside. It's technically a drinking snack, but eating it kind of feels like it's good for you?

New on the menu: lamb-skewer-style chicken cartilage skewers, 4,900 won

Yangkkochi-style chicken cartilage skewers, 6 pieces for ₩4,900. This new item caught my eye — the price was so nice and I was curious about the taste, so I ordered it. It came generously dusted with the spicy shichimi seasoning usually sprinkled on lamb skewers!

The crunchy texture of the chicken cartilage combined with the spicy, tingly shichimi genuinely reminded me of real lamb skewers, haha. The crunchy bite paired with that Chinese-restaurant-style flavor was really appealing. I would've normally ordered heart skewers, but this held its own just as well as a drinking snack!

Sunhari Lemon Gin by the bottle, 9%: a soju I'd never seen before

While drinking solo that day in Sinnonhyeon, I was watching a YouTube episode of 9-jjok with ATEEZ's Choi San and Wooyoung, haha, and right then, an ad popped up for the very Sunhari Lemon Gin bottle at 9% that I'd just seen on the menu when ordering...

Apparently it's the first time Sunhari Lemon Gin has come in bottle form! If the adorably tipsy Choi San drinks it without a worry, and the lemon-drop, sweet-and-sour visuals feature in the ad? Order immediately. (My ideal type: Choi San.)

There's also a canned version of Sunhari Lemon Gin, but this one is 9%, stronger than beer but weaker than soju, so it's refreshing and tasty but sneaks up on you. Seeing it in a bottle for the first time was nice too — it's clear, so it looks prettier, and you can watch how much you've had left.

Green grape and lemon infused liquor! Such a refreshing combination, haha. The 9% ABV of the Sunhari Lemon Gin bottle also felt just right — not too weak to feel like alcohol, but not too strong either.

Sunhari Lemon Gin is 54 kcal — that's per 100ml, so a whole bottle comes out to about 180 kcal.

Kushikatsu for 3,000 won and smelt kushikatsu

Kushikatsu for ₩3,000. A meat skewer the size of a club for just three thousand won?! Fried until super crispy too, which made it even better.

Crispy outside, tender inside — a skewer version of that classic contrast. This held its own right alongside the handmade fish cakes!

Smelt kushikatsu, 2 pieces for ₩3,000. Since the smelt was a bit smaller that day, they usually give you 2 pieces but fried me an extra one. Touched by the gesture, I tried smelt kushikatsu for the first time in my life! Crispy and savory, with real charm. Even though it's fried, the batter wasn't thick, so it never felt greasy or heavy.

The Taiwanese fish glass from the receipt review event

Such a romantic, adorable fish glass... I've always wanted one every time I see them at izakayas, and when I heard you could get one through the receipt review event, I signed up right away, heart racing! For around ₩30,000, I got to properly enjoy a variety of handmade fish cakes and snacks and even walked away with a pretty glass — there was no way I wasn't going to write a review.

Paid, wrote it right there, and scored it, haha. This romance-approved fish glass even matched the cherry blossoms near the entrance nicely! They said if you have company, both people can write one, but since I was drinking solo I only got the one glass for myself — a little bit of a shame, haha.

The color was random, and mine came in a deep blue so rich it genuinely looked like a fish swimming through a river or the sea — such a pretty glass! Review events that give you a drink or menu item are nice, but I'd never seen one give out a Taiwanese fish glass like this before, and I thought it was such a clever touch, haha. I really am the type of drinker who loves drinking out of pretty glasses...

My home cupboard's glass collection now has a beautiful Taiwanese fish glass added to it. They're apparently sold on Coupang too, so I might end up buying a whole set soon, haha.

Even the glass I got from the review was gorgeous, and this whole solo — or shared — drinking session at this great-value, delicious Sinnonhyeon bar, this Gangnam oden bar, comes highly recommended ^_^