Icheon haesintang restaurant: 115,000-won pot for four, Seonghone

Icheon restaurant find: [Seonghone Wang Kodari Dongtaetang]

#sponsored + paid myself

What kind of restaurant is Seonghone Wang Kodari Dongtaetang?

Today's restaurant is a wang kodari (large dried pollock) dongtaetang place near Icheon Hoguk Cemetery. Newly opened in November 2019, located in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do: Seonghone Wang Kodari Dongtaetang.

Seonghone Wang Kodari Dongtaetang specializes in pollock dishes. A well-being menu made with a mother's care, using only fresh ingredients, drawing out the pure flavor of each ingredient.

Cooked in broth simmered from a variety of fresh ingredients, you get an intense flavor you won't find anywhere else. It's a restaurant where you can enjoy the dongtaetang (pollock stew) with noodles added in — a real specialty.

Parking and the old-school signboard out front

You can park in the lot in front of Seonghone Wang Kodari Dongtaetang. It's a bit of a drive from home, so I went back and forth on whether to visit before finally going.

The exterior has that old-school nopo (long-established) feel. Walk past the promotional signboards and the restaurant appears further in.

There's a menu board near the entrance too, so you can check the menu before going in. From dongtaetang to kodari, there are really, really a lot of items.

A restaurant featured on Saengbangsong Today and Saengsaeng Jeongbo (Korean TV shows).

Friday at 6:30pm: how busy was Seonghone?

The interior has that same old-school feel; Seonghone Wang Kodari Dongtaetang isn't a huge place. We visited at peak time, Friday 6:30pm, and not a single table was occupied. Right as we were finishing our meal, one table came in, so we got to eat in peace and quiet.

Seonghone menu and prices in Icheon Seolseong

• Pot pollock stew ₩10,000
• Pot pollock milt stew ₩12,000
• Pot pollock roe stew ₩13,000
• Mixed pollock stew ₩14,000
• Cod mala soup ₩12,000
• Cod head clear soup ₩13,000
• Sea mustard kodari braise set ₩17,000
• Wang kodari braise set ₩14,000
• Braised sea mustard mackerel ₩15,000
• Braised hairtail ₩14,000

Basic table setting. Soy sauce, small plates.

Is the medium haesintang enough for four adults?

The basic side dishes at Seonghone Wang Kodari are pickled garlic, kimchi, bean sprouts, pickled garlic again, and a vegetable salad. We pre-ordered the medium haesintang by phone, and since it seemed like it might not be enough for four adults, we added the 2-person braised sea mustard mackerel.

• Haesintang, medium, 2-3 people ₩115,000
• Braised sea mustard mackerel, 2 people ₩30,000 (no single-person order)
• Rice ₩2,000

Inside the haesintang: whole octopus, abalone and neungi mushroom

A sipjeondaebotang (ten-herb tonic broth) base with garlic, octopus, abalone, shrimp, pine mushroom, shiitake, enoki, water dropwort, and chives.

The octopus goes in whole. It arrives boiled hard and fully cooked, so you can eat right away. The sipjeondaebotang base with garlic, octopus, abalone, shrimp, pine mushroom, shiitake, enoki and chives.

The deep, rich umami of the chicken broth combined with the seafood's clean sweetness makes for a mild yet clean soup. Fish out the ingredients first and eat them. There's mushroom and pine mushroom in there too.

Chicken cooked soft and tender.

Steamed egg that comes with the haesintang order.

Two bowls of rice that come with the haesintang order — garlic, octopus, abalone, shrimp, pine mushroom, shiitake, enoki, all in the sipjeondaebotang base.

Where do Seonghone's ingredients come from?

There's a separate resting area nearby with tables where you can enjoy tea time and take in the surrounding scenery at your leisure.

Even the bean sprouts are brought in directly from a farm that grows them for distribution, and the abalone comes straight from Wando. The pollock is prepared from large fish weighing about five pounds and caught directly, so this is apparently a place where you can taste the pollock liver — an organ you can't find elsewhere.

Based on over 30 years of experience in Japanese cuisine in Gangnam, the owner developed the sauces here, bringing the flavors of Gangnam to Icheon. The hairtail sauce and the braised mackerel sauce are apparently just as good as what you'd get in Gangnam.

End of review! That's it for this #sponsored post.