Friday-night wait and wood ear mushroom texture: Oreno Ramen Gangnam

I went to Oreno Ramen, a well-known Gangnam Station restaurant.

Location and hours of Oreno Ramen Gangnam

Oreno Ramen Gangnam 📍28-9 Teheran-ro 1-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea, 2F 817-30 Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 🚇 Subway 264m from Exit 11 of Gangnam Station, Sinbundang Line 🕒 Hours Daily 11:00 - 20:30 (last order 20:00) No break time

I'd visited the Jamsil branch of Oreno Ramen a few times before. This time I went to the Gangnam branch, and since it was a Friday evening, there was a wait.

Still, the restaurant is fairly large and turnover was fast, so I didn't have to wait as long as I expected.

How the wait and ordering work

Instead of waiting at the entrance and being seated when your turn comes, the system here is: you select your menu and pay at a kiosk near the entrance, then wait inside again.

Once a seat opens up, a staff member guides you to it, and that's when you receive your ramen.

Solo dining seats and the open kitchen vibe

The restaurant was bigger than I expected, and it was nearly full since it was Friday night.

Besides tables, there were also bar-style seats set up specifically for solo diners, and in fact there were quite a lot of people eating alone. It felt like a comfortable place to grab ramen by yourself near Gangnam Station.

What impressed me most was that the staff stayed friendly even during the busy rush. Despite the crowd and the constant stream of orders, they handled everything calmly and quickly. Since it's an open kitchen, I could watch the ramen being made in real time — several staff members moving fast, each handling their own role in perfect sync, which honestly looked pretty cool. Even amid the chaos, the kitchen stayed clean and organized, so it was fun to watch while waiting for the food.

On one side of the restaurant, a Michelin Guide book was on display. Oreno Ramen is known for being featured in the Michelin Guide Seoul, so seeing the actual book displayed made me take a second look.

Kimchi and pickled ginger are provided, while radish is self-serve at the table.

Not tonkotsu — chicken broth paitan ramen

Oreno Ramen's signature dish isn't a typical pork-bone-based tonkotsu ramen but a paitan ramen made by simmering chicken for a long time.

The menu is fairly simple too, centered on tori paitan and kara paitan, which gave me the sense that they're really focused on the ramen itself.

We ordered two bowls of tori paitan that day, adding a soft-boiled egg to one of them. We also ordered a Coca-Cola Light.

Tori paitan toppings and sous-vide chicken

The moment the tori paitan arrived, what caught my eye first was the pale, cloudy, bubbly broth.

On top of the broth were sous-vide chicken, thinly sliced chashu, wood ear mushroom, and green onion, with a light sprinkle of pepper.

The chicken was really tender. Cooked sous-vide, it had almost none of the dry texture you'd get from a regular chicken breast — it was moist and clean-tasting, with none of the gamey smell chicken sometimes has.

The crunchy texture of wood ear mushroom

And what I especially liked was the wood ear mushroom.

With the pale, soft chicken broth, noodles, and chicken all giving an overall soft texture, the wood ear mushroom's crunch in between really brought the texture to life. Thanks to that contrast, eating the ramen never felt boring.

The green onion went well with the broth too, and the soft-boiled egg's moist yolk added a savory richness when eaten with the deep chicken broth.

The soft-boiled egg was also seasoned just right, so it was delicious even on its own.

The broth was very rich and creamy from the first sip, but it wasn't heavy or greasy. It's based on a savory, deep flavor drawn from the chicken, which felt clearly different from tonkotsu — and despite being a pale, cloudy broth, it went down surprisingly clean.

How much are the free noodle and broth refills

Another distinctive thing about Oreno Ramen is that once you order ramen, you can get free extra noodles, broth, rice, and kimchi.

My husband added extra noodles and broth partway through, and it really felt like getting a whole new bowl.

The noodle refill doesn't come with mushroom, but it comes loaded with onion flakes, which was actually a nice touch.

Adding the leftover soft-boiled egg to the extra broth made it feel like a full bowl all over again.

The assorted tsukune we ordered as a side

This was my first time ordering the assorted tsukune. Tsukune is a Japanese-style chicken meatball dish, and this set came with a mentaiko-scallion chicken skewer and a mayonnaise-topped skewer together. Both had really tender chicken. The meatballs themselves were especially moist, with no dryness at all, and you could taste the clean, deep flavor coming from the chicken.

The mentaiko-scallion skewer had the salty flavor of mentaiko (pollock roe) combined with the aroma of scallion, which paired well with the chicken meatballs, while the mayonnaise-topped one had a slightly richer, softer flavor.

Since the two tasted different, it was fun to alternate between them bite by bite. The ramen alone is filling enough, but if you want a side dish to go with it, the assorted tsukune seems like a solid choice.

Wrap-up

Above all, the restaurant is spacious with solo dining seats set aside, so plenty of people were eating alone, and the staff stayed friendly even while busy, making the whole meal a pleasant experience.

If you're looking for a rich, creamy chicken broth ramen near Gangnam Station, Oreno Ramen Gangnam is worth a visit. Even with a wait, turnover is fast, and best of all, being able to add extra noodles or broth after finishing your ramen made it a satisfying, filling meal.