Gimhae Korean restaurant, road-trip stop with glass noodles: Ppyeodae

I'm an office worker who took a short one-night trip to Busan to say hello to my girlfriend's paternal family.

🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️🛣️ It was such a long and grueling drive, but they treated us to a delicious meal, and on the way back I got to eat really good gamjatang (pork bone soup) for the first time in a while, so the driving didn't feel too tough haha. Let me write up my review of the gamjatang place I genuinely enjoyed — Ppyeodae Itneun Haejangguk Juchon Branch :)

A great Gimhae Juchon stop on the way back

📌 Ppyeodae Itneun Haejangguk Juchon Branch / 295 Seobu-ro 1637beon-gil, Juchon-myeon, Gimhae-si, Gyeongnam, South Korea

Hours: daily 06:00–21:00 (last order 20:30)

We stayed near Sasang in Busan, and on the drive back up we passed through the Juchon area! After some frantic searching, I found this restaurant — Ppyeodae Itneun Haejangguk! Checking the navigation, it only added about 10 minutes, so I figured it'd be 100 times better than rest-stop food and decided to stop by!

Parking lot and restaurant size

Since there's a golf course nearby and people passing through on their way back also stop in, there was a large parking lot :) It looked like it could fit around 10 or more cars!

Inside, it was a spacious restaurant with about 15 tables combined for 4 to 6 people, and the spacing between tables was generous — good! Orders are placed via kiosk and payment is made at the counter afterward +_+

What we ordered

The menu has haejangguk (hangover soup) and gamjatang (pork bone soup), plus various side dishes. What we ordered was the two-person set + pot rice + fried rice + zero-sugar cola!! The two-person set comes with garlic boiled pork and seasoned crab on the side — a very, very generous spread~

Since I'm a beginner at picking meat off the bone with my fingers, I was very glad to see a box of wet wipes on the table, and there was tissue paper tucked in with the utensils too haha.

While waiting for the food, a Korean Food Grand Prize certificate on the wall caught my eye! Seeing it, I thought, we picked the right place +_+ The night before, I'd had a few drinks with my girlfriend's family elders, so I really needed some hot broth hahaha.

Garlic boiled pork and seasoned crab, the two-person set basics

First, the basic side dishes! Two kinds of kimchi, ssamjang (seasoned soybean paste), plus peppers and onion. The dipping sauce for the meat had some minced garlic and onion in it. Feels a bit more special than a plain sauce, so I was satisfied +_+

Here's the garlic boiled pork and seasoned crab that come standard with the two-person set..! These arrived first and we tried them, and ah~ I could already tell the gamjatang quality was guaranteed hahaha.

The garlic boiled pork was sliced to a nice thickness, the garlic had almost no harsh bite, and it went well with the soy-based? sauce. The seasoned crab tasted like it would make a whole bowl of warm rice disappear! There was quite a lot of meat too, so we enjoyed it a lot :)

The two-person gamjatang, glass noodles, and white rice pot rice

Next, the two-person gamjatang came out right away, and there were roughly 6–7 chunks of meat! Also, unlike most other gamjatang places, this one included glass noodles +_+

The white rice pot rice is ₩2,000, a thousand won more than plain rice! But since I'm a pot rice fanatic, pot rice it is, no question!!

This wasn't some scrawny bone-only creature that grew up malnourished — it was a pig among pigs, fed as generously as I was ha_ha.

I'm not really a glass noodle enthusiast, so I only had about three chopstickfuls, and my girlfriend, who's a glass noodle hater, ate just a bit and set the rest aside :) But the glass noodles in the gamjatang were actually really good! If I'd known they were in there, I would've eaten them before they got too soft...

Self-serve fried rice: how much broth should you scoop out?

Self-serve fried rice is ₩3,000! Green onion, kimchi, pickled radish, seaweed, sesame oil, and rice. I mixed it in with siraegi (dried radish greens) from the gamjatang, a bit of meat, and some broth +_+

I scooped out a lot of the broth to make it drier before mixing, but I think it would've been even better with a little more broth removed!! It was a one-ladle-too-much moment...

So I left the burner on longer and reduced the broth down a lot more. Maybe because I mixed it myself, but I think this might be the best fried rice I've had at any gamjatang place so far hahahaha.

Overall thoughts on Ppyeodae Itneun Haejangguk Juchon Branch

We stopped by Ppyeodae Itneun Haejangguk Juchon Branch because it was conveniently on our route, and the meal turned out to be far more delicious and comfortable than expected! We ate lunch at 11 and dinner past 7, that's how much we overate,,,,, writing this post, I look back and wonder how two people managed to finish boiled pork + crab + gamjatang + pot rice + fried rice haha. If I'm ever in the area again, I would definitely revisit :)

The weekend flew by because of the long trip, but it was filled with such good food that I didn't feel too much regret haha.

If you're heading back from Busan or nearby and want a proper meal instead of rest-stop food, I highly recommend Ppyeodae Itneun Haejangguk +_+ That's it~