Sejong jokbal takeout ₩2,000 off by phone: Cheongmigwan Naseong-dong

Where do you park at Cheongmigwan Sejong Naseong Main Branch?

You can park at the Hanshin The Hue commercial building near Cheongmigwan Sejong Naseong Main Branch, and there's no separate payment for entering or exiting. I'd heard rumors this was a jokbal (pig's trotter) restaurant worth visiting in Naseong-dong, so I went to check it out!

Parking really is generous in Sejong! The Hanshin The Hue lot is big and pleasant, so it seems like a good spot to use whenever heading to Naseong-dong.

Cheongmigwan's exterior and interior don't look like a jokbal place

Cheongmigwan sits right in the middle of Naseong-dong's restaurant strip. It doesn't look like a jokbal restaurant at all — the interior feels more like a café, so you couldn't tell from the outside what kind of place it was. I visited around 6pm on a Saturday, and it was already crowded by then. It really felt like a famous jokbal spot in Sejong.

The interior is quite elegant. Jokbal restaurants used to mean noisy company dinners and drinking in a comfortable, worn-in kind of space, but these days even jokbal places have really nice interiors. There's a chandelier on the ceiling and a wood-toned look, giving it more of a jokbal-restaurant feel. The weather's been nice lately, and since it's an open-style venue, you could get an outdoor-dining vibe on a cool evening.

Order takeout by phone and get ₩2,000 more off

I used Cheongmigwan for takeout this time. If you call ahead to reserve, they'll have your order packed and ready when you arrive. I got there a bit late, but it was packed in an insulated bag, so it stayed warm and I could enjoy it hot at home.

You can also book takeout through Naver, but ordering by phone gets you an extra ₩2,000 off, so I'd recommend calling.

Half-and-half jokbal (₩53,000): enough for three people

I'd heard so many good reviews about Cheongmigwan's jokbal that I was really curious. The half-and-half jokbal is a portion for 3, with the regular trotter and the spicy grilled (bul) trotter packed separately, and both came generously filled.

The trotter was braised until it was somewhere between tender and melt-in-your-mouth. Thanks to that, even the skin wasn't chewy at all and was easy to bite through.

What I especially liked was that, unlike a lot of jokbal these days that comes with added smoke flavoring, this one was clean with no charcoal smokiness. It's a matter of taste, but I personally think unsmoked jokbal tastes better.

How spicy is the chive spicy trotter (buchu bul-jokbal)? About Shin Ramyun level

This is buchu bulgokbal — trotter with fresh chives and spicy sauce 🔥 Even by a spice-wimp's standard, it wasn't very hot and was easy to eat. It was about Shin Ramyun-level spicy, so most people shouldn't have trouble with it. Just like the regular trotter, it's braised until tender, then topped with spicy sauce and chives, and it tasted clean.

Platter buckwheat noodles (jaengban makguksu, ₩10,000)

How can you have jokbal without buckwheat noodles! Gotta refuel on carbs too 🤍 The platter makguksu came packed in a generous portion too. Cheongmigwan basically serves big portions across the board.

At first the sauce looked a bit sparse, but there was plenty of it pooled underneath, so I mixed it up from the bottom and ate it alongside the jokbal. It's a handmade fruit sauce, so it was spicy-sweet, and the noodles weren't very hot either. The noodles were springy and great for filling up on carbs.

What sides come with it: salted shrimp, lettuce and perilla leaves

Salted shrimp (saeujeot), lettuce, perilla leaves and other sides came generously too, and I ate them alongside the jokbal. Eating it with the sides meant I never got tired of it. The saeujeot wasn't the watery kind — it was closer in color to ssamjang, so the flavor was stronger.

There are a lot of jokbal restaurants in Sejong, but this is one of the best of the bunch, so I'll definitely be back whenever I'm craving jokbal again!