Noksapyeong Korean restaurant lunch with seafood jang: Modam Itaewon

There are days when you love Korean food but don't want the usual, overly familiar hanjeongsik (Korean set-course meal) — you want somewhere that plays with it a little. Modam Itaewon was exactly that.

Korean ingredients like bracken, perilla oil, gamtae (seaweed laver), black sesame, and gim-bugak (fried seaweed chips) show up all over the place, but the plating is quite modern, so it was fun just to look at everything while eating.

But the most important part... every single dish was genuinely delicious!!! The modum haemuljang (assorted seafood jang) especially stuck in my head even after I finished eating. (Thinking about it again while writing this...)

Where is Modam Itaewon, and what is the entrance like?

Modam Itaewon is on the first floor of the Mondrian Hotel, so the atmosphere feels a bit different from a typical hanjeongsik restaurant right from the entrance.

There's a large plum-blossom-like pattern set into metal at the entrance, and the way it reinterprets a traditional element without going old-fashioned really matches the restaurant's overall mood.

Private room or hall seating at Modam Itaewon?

Modam has quite a few private rooms, so it seems popular for private occasions like family gatherings or meeting the in-laws. But I actually liked the hall seating more haha

The hall also divides the tables with high-backed seats, so you don't end up making eye contact with other tables as much as you'd think. It's not a closed-off, stuffy room, but it feels appropriately independent, which made conversation comfortable — and honestly the photos came out much prettier in the hall. The lighting wasn't too dark either, so it was great for taking food photos :)

Weekday lunch set prices and the best combination to order

When we went, the weekday lunch prices were ₩45,000 for the modum haemuljang set and ₩45,000 for the handmade tteokgalbi set. The sets come with a shared course first and then you choose your main, so if you're going with two people, ordering one of each and sharing seems like the best move.

This is the save-this-post point of this whole story!! If two of you go, get the seafood jang plus the tteokgalbi — one each. You share the common menu together and still get to try both mains, which is exactly how we ordered.

The common course: from appetizers to shiitake modam gangjeong

First, the shared menu items come out~

First come light starters with seasonal fish and vegetables, salad-like dishes that open up your appetite. The moment I ate a piece of sashimi, that feeling hit me again — oh, this is another, another, another winner...

These weren't just ordinary starters — each dish was high-level, the kind of flavor that bursts like fireworks in your mouth!

They especially added black sesame to gim-bugak and paired it with fruit — putting Korean ingredients into unexpected combinations. The texture was amazing and that black sesame sauce was genuinely so good... a sauce that becomes a dish all on its own. The chef at Modam dining is a food genius.

There was also buckwheat noodles made with bracken and perilla oil, and having a dish like this in the middle definitely made you feel Modam's own character. Interestingly, even though a lot of different ingredients were mixed in, the overall flavor balance was really well done!!

The modam gangjeong was crispy fried pieces topped with sauce and chopped scallions. It looks like fried chicken in photos, but it's actually made with shiitake mushrooms — another twist! This was my absolute favorite!!!!! I normally avoid fried food because of weight, but this flavor was genuinely irresistible.

The modum haemuljang set and gamtae butter rice

Now for the main course! Rice, soup, and side dishes all come together on one table. With the seafood jang, the meal comes with butter mixed with gamtae to stir into the rice, which paired much better with the haemuljang than plain white rice would have.

And then — the long-awaited modum haemuljang (assorted seafood jang)...!! The name 'haemuljang' might sound unfamiliar, but it's generously packed with abalone, octopus, shrimp, and more, and the jang (marinade/sauce) wasn't so strong that it overpowered the seafood's own flavor. With so many different ingredients, it was fun picking through them, and eating it over the gamtae butter rice gave it a completely different feel.

My absolute pick that day was, no question, the haemuljang. After we left, I kept chanting to Aladdin (my boyfriend), 'I keep thinking about the haemuljang, I keep thinking about the haemuljang, I keep thinking about the haemuljang'... If I go back, I'm ordering this again for sure.

How was the handmade tteokgalbi set?

The handmade tteokgalbi (Korean beef patty) comes as a thick patty served with deodeok (mountain root) and vegetables. The current menu describes it as tteokgalbi aged for 24 hours, and since it's a familiar dish, it was actually easy to compare. The meaty flavor really came through, and it was nice to eat back and forth with the garnish that came alongside it.

Laid all out like this, the table looks really generous. Since it's course-style — several dishes before the main, then rice at the end — the meal felt a lot longer and more varied than a hanjeongsik where you just eat one main dish.

Dessert comes out too! It genuinely tastes like perilla leaf haha.

Is Modam Itaewon worth it for weekday lunch?

I went into Modam Itaewon thinking of it as a nice-atmosphere hanjeongsik place, but ended up remembering it more for the food. Against my expectations, every single dish was truly delicious and really brought out the character of the ingredients.

It's fun that they use a lot of Korean ingredients but don't play it too predictable, and more than anything, it wasn't just one or two standout dishes — everything from start to finish was delicious. There are a ton of private rooms, and the price is genuinely reasonable relative to the food quality, so I'd strongly recommend it for hosting guests ⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you're thinking about a date or photos, I'd also recommend the hall seating without hesitation. And if two of you go, again — one seafood jang, one tteokgalbi... try that combination haha.

I'm definitely taking my parents here and paying with my own money next time >_<