Jongno 3-ga dumpling hot pot with jorangi rice cake: Jongga Mandu

Why go to Jongga Mandu in Jongno 3-ga for dumpling hot pot?

On days like these, with big swings in temperature and a craving for something spicy and hot, there's one dish that comes to mind first. Kimchi jjigae? No. Doenjang jjigae? No. Today's pick is mandu jeongol — dumpling hot pot.

I hadn't been in a while, so I went to Jongga Mandu (종가만두) in Jongno 3-ga, famous for its handmade dumplings, with a dumpling-loving friend, and we ate our fill of steaming hot dumplings.

Just as we were about to walk in, a foreign customer glanced at the menu and beat us inside. Apparently dumplings are quite popular with foreign visitors these days.

Even though it was still early for lunch, the place was packed. Luckily we managed to grab the last open table.

The moment we stepped inside, a delicious smell hit us. I could see why so many people are drawn in by that smell alone — and now I couldn't wait to eat.

Spicy broth or clear broth: which hot pot to order

This time at Jongga Mandu, we ordered the spicy hot pot (얼큰전골). The ingredients are the same either way — you just choose between a clear broth or a spicy one — and we went with the spicy broth my friend loves.

The basic side dishes are dressed lettuce salad and pickled radish, and there's a self-serve bar for refills.

This is the place where you can taste dumplings just like the royal-court-style ones a mother would fold at home — they use dumplings folded fresh every morning, packed full of filling.

What's in the red hot pot: meat and kimchi dumplings

A little later, the spicy dumpling hot pot arrived at our table. Look at that visual, isn't it something? A pot brimming with deep red broth — doesn't it just pull you in?

Each serving comes with 2 meat dumplings and 2 kimchi dumplings, plus a kalguksu noodle serving to finish with. We also added jorangi rice cake (조랭이떡) on the side.

Once the fresh vegetables and meat had time to add flavor to the delicious broth, the handmade dumplings went in carefully.

The dumpling skins turned translucent as they cooked through nicely.

Around that time, the jorangi rice cake went in too.

Dumpling skins as chewy as sujebi dough

The dumpling skins had a springy, chewy quality that felt almost sticky, and I could already tell how good they'd taste before even taking a bite. The skins weren't thin, so it almost felt like eating sujebi (hand-torn dough soup).

The meat dumplings, stuffed generously with meat, we deliberately let one burst while simmering.

This one is the kimchi dumpling — the vegetables in the filling were crisp, giving it good texture without feeling greasy. Most dumplings you'd think of are mostly glass noodles inside, but Jongga Mandu's are packed with meat and vegetables instead, which made for a nicely balanced bite nutritionally.

Deliberately bursting the dumpling filling into the broth made it even richer, and a spicy, sharp aroma spread through the air all at once — it was enough to make my mouth water on its own. After a good simmer, a deep, clean spiciness seemed to rise up from the bottom of the pot, and it tasted even better than before.

Finishing with jorangi rice cakes and kalguksu noodles

This is the moment to eat the jorangi rice cake. It has a different flavor from the dumplings — chewy in a way that felt like eating spicy tteokbokki.

The hot pot, having drawn out flavor from the meat and kimchi dumplings, was full of deep savoriness and nuttiness. I left the rest of the dumplings to my dumpling-loving friend and finished off the meal with kalguksu noodles. The noodles simmered in a broth that combined vegetable stock and meat stock, and as it reduced further, it was guaranteed to taste amazing.

The deeply reduced broth soaked right into the noodles, and it tasted like a nostalgic bowl of kalguksu I'd once had and searched high and low to find again. We scraped the pot clean down to the last drop of broth, and the sweat we'd been holding back finally rolled down.

Somehow, the spicy dumpling hot pot we ate today felt like a proper recovery meal for surviving the tail end of summer. It was a meal at Jongga Mandu where I really felt that handmade, carefully made quality. If you're looking for a spicy soup dish that will really clear you out, I highly recommend trying the spicy dumpling hot pot.