Chungmuro sujebi restaurant with bossam for two: Nagwon-ui Soba

Where is Nagwon-ui Soba Chungmuro Station Main Branch, and what are the hours?

Nagwon-ui Soba Chungmuro Station Main Branch is on the 2nd floor of a building at 2 Seoae-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul. It's about 295m from Chungmuro Station Exit 1 — 3 to 5 minutes on foot! It's right near Seoul Baptist Church, so it wasn't hard to find at all.

Hours are daily 10:45-21:00, with a weekday break time of 15:00-16:30 and no break on weekends. Last order is at 20:00.

Usage info: reservations, takeout, and group dining available; separate men's and women's restrooms; baby chair available; remote waiting via Catch Table possible.

Finding Nagwon-ui Soba near Chungmuro Station Exit 1

Nagwon-ui Soba Chungmuro Station Main Branch was just a short walk from Chungmuro Station! It's on the 2nd floor of the building, but the big signboard is visible from outside so it was easier to find than I expected. They've apparently been making their own buckwheat noodles fresh in-store every day since 2018, and the menu goes well beyond soba — bossam, tonkatsu, kalguksu (knife-cut noodle soup) and more — so it's great both as a Chungmuro lunch spot and for a drink-with-dinner in the evening.

How to join the wait at Nagwon-ui Soba: Catch Table

On the way up to the restaurant, there's a monitor showing the Catch Table waitlist status. When I visited I got lucky — zero parties waiting, so I got in right away! Nagwon-ui Soba is apparently quite famous among Chungmuro office workers as a lunch spot, so watch out for waits during peak hours or weekends. You don't have to stand in line since remote waiting through Catch Table is available, so if you're planning a lunchtime visit, I'd recommend checking ahead.

Watch your step heading up to the 2nd floor haha.

Inside Nagwon-ui Soba: bigger than it looks from the street

Once inside, the place was much longer and more spacious than the exterior suggested! Overall it's a clean wood-toned interior with quite a lot of tables and good spacing between seats. It's fine for a solo meal or a casual meal for two, but with that many tables it also looked good for larger groups.

There were actually quite a few other diners there when I visited, so keep this in mind if you're looking for a spot for a Chungmuro work dinner or office lunch.

You can see the cooking happening right there, so it's basically an open kitchen haha. And it's a full glass wall, so you can look down below — really nice haha.

Nagwon-ui Soba menu and what two of us ordered

Because of the name, I first assumed Nagwon-ui Soba was mainly a soba place, but looking at the menu it turned out to have a much wider range than I expected. Alongside their signature buckwheat noodles, there's tonkatsu, pollock roe kalguksu, and perilla sujebi, plus bossam that's great for sharing with a group! I heard they boil the bossam fresh every day, so we ordered that too.

• Bossam (small) 36,000 won — serves 2, 350g
• Beef bone perilla sujebi 11,000 won

The small bossam is 350g, meant for two, so it's a good size for two people with one side dish added. There's also a cheaper suyuk (boiled pork without the kimchi accompaniments) option. We wanted something hot and nutty to go with it, so we also ordered the beef bone perilla sujebi! The weather's starting to get a bit chilly these days, and bossam with perilla sujebi... just the combo itself feels so satisfying.

First side dish at Nagwon-ui Soba: punchy green onion kimchi

After ordering, the side dishes come out first, and a seriously delicious green onion kimchi arrives! It's not the kind where the seasoning is just loosely coated — the red seasoning was soaked deep between every strand of green onion. One bite and you get that sharp green onion bite hitting right alongside the rich seasoning!

Bossam comes with a generous plate of wrap greens

Ordering the bossam came with a generous variety of wrap greens to eat alongside the meat — napa cabbage, lettuce, and perilla leaves! Lettuce and perilla leaves are great, but bossam really calls for napa cabbage, doesn't it haha. The cabbage was crisp and a little sweet, perfect for topping with a piece of bossam. There was plenty of it too, so you could pick whichever you liked.

Even the salt shaker was kind of cute. It was sitting on one side of the table, and the cactus-shaped lid was too cute not to photograph lol. Little details like this made me want to take a picture of everything 🌵.

The beef bone perilla sujebi arrives, 11,000 won

And here comes the beef bone perilla sujebi we ordered, 11,000 won! You can probably tell from the photo, but the bowl itself was huge, so there was more of it than I expected! We ordered it to go with the bossam, and it turned out to be plenty for two to share. The broth was loaded with perilla, so a nutty aroma hit us the moment it arrived.

Perilla mixed into the broth, plus a generous sprinkle on top! Haha, this place is really great for a drink with your meal. Let me show you how packed the broth was with ingredients.

Chewy hand-torn dumplings in nutty perilla broth

The sujebi (hand-torn dumplings) weren't thin at all — they had a proper chewy, springy texture. There were mushrooms and chives in there too, so the toppings felt pretty substantial. But above all, the broth was seriously nutty!! That distinct perilla flavor was rich without being too heavy, so my spoon kept going back in.

Between bites of sujebi and slurps of broth, I somehow ended up just spooning it up nonstop lol. Personally, ordering it alongside the bossam was a great call. Highly recommend the hot perilla sujebi + bossam combo!

Not just plain kimchi but green onion kimchi on top makes it even tastier.

The bossam has arrived!!

The main event: bossam (small), 36,000 won

And then the bossam we'd been waiting for, small size at 36,000 won, arrives! Even in the small size, it comes out on one big brass plate loaded with meat and all the accompaniments at once, so the spread was more generous than expected. Alongside the bossam came kimchi and seasoned side dishes, salted shrimp, ssamjang (dipping sauce), garlic and chili — plenty of fun mixing and matching flavors. The meat included both lean cuts and cuts with a bit of fat, so you could pick whichever you preferred.

Boiled fresh daily, so the bossam stays melt-in-your-mouth tender

Apparently Nagwon-ui Soba boils their bossam fresh every day, and you could really tell — the meat wasn't tough at all, it was tender. The lean parts in particular weren't dry, they were moist, and the fattier parts were soft, making for a great combo eaten together. Bossam sometimes disappoints when the lean meat ends up dry, but here the whole thing had that melt-in-your-mouth texture, which I really loved.

Bossam with seasoned pollock salad: a different kind of bite

There was also myeongtaehoe-muchim (spicy seasoned pollock) served alongside the bossam, and I piled it generously on top of a piece of meat. The chewy texture plus the sweet-spicy seasoning gave a totally different feel compared to eating it with plain kimchi! The mild, tender bossam paired with the spicy seasoned salad really woke up my appetite.

Since I'm dieting, I'll conscientiously wrap it in cabbage too haha.

Write a review at Nagwon-ui Soba, get free ice cream?

And near the entrance I found an ice cream freezer! At first I thought it was just for sale, but it turns out that if you write a Naver receipt review or a Google review, you get a free ice cream. And the lineup was surprisingly premium lol — from Bungeo Ssamanco to Gugucon, Sulbing, Lalasweet — convenience-store-pricey ice creams, right here. Eat a hearty meal, leave a review, and get dessert too... can't pass up an event like that, yum.

FYI I'm a huge fan of the famous Bungeo Ssamanco.

Restrooms at Nagwon-ui Soba: separate by gender, with a baby toilet seat cover

The restrooms are inside the restaurant and are separated for men and women. Using them, they seemed well maintained, which I liked! With a baby chair in the dining area and even a baby toilet seat cover in the restroom, it looked convenient for families visiting with kids.

An adorably tiny toilet seat cover that probably wouldn't fit half of my own bum.

Final verdict on Nagwon-ui Soba in Chungmuro

Nagwon-ui Soba Chungmuro Station Main Branch is the kind of place I'll think of again whenever I want bossam in Chungmuro! Honestly, from the name alone I assumed it was a soba specialist, but visiting in person showed a menu ranging way beyond soba — bossam, tonkatsu, kalguksu, perilla sujebi — making it useful from lunch through dinner.

In particular, the daily-boiled bossam had tender meat, and it came with napa cabbage, lettuce, perilla leaves and various sides, so mixing and matching to taste was part of the fun. The beef bone perilla sujebi we ordered alongside it was also generous in portion with a genuinely nutty broth — a great pairing with the bossam! Slurping down the chewy sujebi, the two of us left feeling very full haha.

Close to Chungmuro Station, with Catch Table waiting, a spacious interior, separate men's/women's restrooms, and a baby chair, I'd recommend it for a Chungmuro lunch, a family meal out, or a group dinner. And don't forget — after your meal, leave a review and grab your ice cream too lol 🍦