Stone plate bone grill and fried rice at Gunja Station bar Saechamjip

This weekend I went out for a drink with my mom after a long while, so here's the review haha~

This time we went to Saechamjip Gunja Branch (새참집 군자직영점), located in the Gunja Station food alley 😆

Where is Saechamjip near Gunja Station, and is there parking?

The place is a short walk from Exit 6, and parking was available right in front 🚘

The look of the place, inside and out

This actually wasn't my first visit! I'd come once before with my dad, and the food and vibe were so good that I remembered it fondly — so this time I came back for a cozy night with my mom haha

They're open from 17:30 to 02:00, which I loved since it's pretty late. I got there around 10pm and thankfully there was no wait 🙆🏻‍♀️

Inside there's a variety of seating — 2-seat tables, 4-seat tables, group seating — and the spacing is generous

Besides the open seating, there are also individual private rooms, so it felt like they'd thought of privacy too. I think it'd work well for both gatherings and dates 👀

Ordering at the kiosk

You can check the menu on the board, but ordering through the kiosk was convenient too ^_^ Just note that everything is handmade so cooking can take a while — I'd recommend ordering right when you arrive ✍️

+) FYI, if you write a Naver photo review, you get ₩8,000 worth of pomegranate white peach dessert ✔️

Complimentary snacks and hovenia tea

First they bring basic side dishes — mukbap (acorn jelly) and corn snacks, plus a hangover remedy — and even the water was Heotgae (hovenia fruit) tea style, which I loved. It was exactly the right setup for drinking 🍶

Strawberry smoothie makgeolli

First to arrive was the freshly blended strawberry smoothie makgeolli (rice wine) — something I'd been curious about since my last visit, so I ordered it. Just the color alone gave off that sweet-and-tart vibe 🍓

The alcohol content wasn't too high and it had a smooth style, so it went down more easily than regular makgeolli — my mom and I chatted about this and that while sipping, and before we knew it we'd finished the whole bottle~

The signature baekmuk-eunji stone plate bone grill

Next up: the baekmuk-eunji (aged kimchi) stone plate bone grill! This is marked as the signature dish on the menu, so I ordered it as the main — it came out on a stone plate with big chunks of bone meat covered in cheese, visually amazing 👍🏻

The spicy-sweet sauce was thickly coated on the meat, with bean sprouts underneath and shredded scallions on top — the seasoning was just right, and I loved that it kept sizzling away on the hot stone plate the whole time 😋

There's a fun part where you pick the meat off the bone — the meat was super tender and thick, so it was easy to eat, and honestly better than most dedicated bone grill restaurants. Definitely a dish I'd recommend!

+) The aged kimchi that comes with it is also a treat on its own ✨ They refilled it generously too, so no worries about running out

Mentaiko egg roll

Since it had been a while and I didn't want the fun to end, I ordered the mentaiko (seasoned pollock roe) egg roll too — the fluffy, well-cooked egg with sweet-savory mentaiko inside was a flavor pretty much anyone would enjoy!

Eating a bite of egg roll in between the spicy bone grill made it totally manageable even for spice wimps 🍳

Fried rice in the leftover sauce

Lastly, to ease our reluctance to leave, we ordered fried rice made with the leftover sauce 🍚

A staff member took the plate away and brought it back with the sauce and rice stir-fried together on the stone plate — topping it with the leftover bone meat was a perfect combo 🍯. Every grain of rice was well seasoned, and even scraping up the slightly crispy bits, I was so full but the fried rice just kept going in haha

Is Saechamjip worth a late-night visit?

There are plenty of restaurants I don't bother returning to, but this is one I've already decided to visit again! Especially the bone grill, which is as good as a specialty restaurant — the strawberry makgeolli and fried rice are must-orders too 🔥

If you're looking for a private bar or a date spot in Gunja, I think it's worth stopping by at least once :)