Pasta restaurant near Hapjeong Station, Seoul: Hongdae Hwadeok Pizza

What kind of place is Hongdae Hwadeok Pizza, near Hapjeong Station Exit 6?

Hongdae Hwadeok Pizza is a 15-year-old Neapolitan wood-fired pizza and pasta restaurant located roughly between Hapjeong and Sangsu stations. It's about 433m from Exit 6 of Hapjeong Station, at 1F, 5 Dokmak-ro 7-gil, Mapo-gu, Seoul, South Korea. The storefront has that long-standing, lived-in warmth to it — you can tell it's been here a while :)

Hours are Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun 11:30–22:00, with a break time of 15:30–16:30 (no break time on weekends). Last order is 21:30, and it's closed every Tuesday.

We visited after making a reservation, and the friendly owner showed us to our seats 💗

Personally I love this kind of cozy atmosphere so much ✨

Hongdae Hwadeok Pizza menu and how to order by tablet

At Hongdae Hwadeok Pizza you order through a tablet placed at every table. There were a lot of foreign customers when we visited, and there's an English menu for them too! A truly global Hapjeong Station favorite 🌎

For salads, there were cloud bread salad and fungi (mushroom) salad.

There are so many pastas too! Cream pastas include gamberi crema penne, hanwoo (Korean beef) cream pasta, and seafood cream pasta; oil pastas include gamberi e rucola and vongole; tomato pastas include pomodoro and gamberi piccante penne tomato pasta, and more. We went with the top-recommended oil pasta, gamberi e rucola ✔️

Can you get two flavors? Ordering a half-and-half pizza

It's a Neapolitan wood-fired pizza spot, so of course we had to get pizza 🍕 Options include quattro stagioni, where you can taste four flavors, quattro formaggi, rucola prosciutto, fungi prosciutto, quattro fungi, and manjo pizza. Since we wanted to enjoy two flavors, we ordered a half-and-half pizza. You can change this after selecting a pizza from the options menu! We chose quattro formaggi and manjo pizza 💗 ⭐️Expectations sky-high⭐️

• 🍕 Quattro Formaggi Pizza — Hongdae Hwadeok Pizza's rich cream cheese pizza made with gorgonzola, cream cheese, reggiano cheese, and mozzarella cheese
• 🍕 Manjo Pizza — Hongdae Hwadeok Pizza's version of a bulgogi-style pizza, moist with beef, onion, and paprika toppings on tomato sauce

The Coke we ordered came out first.

Right now Hongdae Hwadeok Pizza is running a review event 🎈! Sign up for notifications and leave a review, and they'll give you a free Coke or Sprite 🥤

Polaroids on the walls, some dating back to 2013

And looking around the restaurant, you could see it was covered in polaroid photos — they offer an instant-photo service 📸. As if reflecting the long history of this Hapjeong Station favorite / Hongdae pasta spot, some of the polaroids dated back to 2013, and seeing them still so carefully kept showed just how thoughtful and how much affection the owner has for their guests 💗

A shot of the chef (the owner) at work ✨

Looks so good already (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)و ♡

How does the gamberi e rucola oil pasta taste?

Hongdae Hwadeok Pizza's gamberi e rucola is an oil pasta with rucola, shrimp, cherry tomatoes, garlic and more. The seasoning was just right too, not salty or overpowering 💗

Our gamberi e rucola 🍝 arrived. Such a delicious-looking oil pasta!

Quattro Formaggi and Manjo half-and-half pizza review

Half-and-half, split between manjo and quattro formaggi 🍕

I really felt like we made a great choice — each half had a dramatically different charm (?). We ate the quattro cheese pizza with the honey that came with it, and it was fluffy, soft, and packed with cheese! It had been a while since I'd had cheese pizza like that, and it was so, so good 💗 The manjo pizza had thin beef toppings on top and was full of tomato sauce flavor — going back and forth whenever the cheese pizza got a bit rich, I felt like I could've eaten several more plates 👊

It was so good we just wolfed it all down. This is exactly why they've been able to hold their spot in Hapjeong for so long — it's genuinely delicious. (I mean it.)

There was pizza... and now there isn't (?). Cleaned the plate 🔥👍