Seongsu Korean restaurant weekend lunch with potato pavé: Out of Order

Looking for somewhere to have lunch in Seongsu on a weekend, I ended up at Out of Order.

It's a place with a menu that mixes Korean and Western cooking using familiar ingredients like cabbage, clams, and potato.

We ordered grilled napa cabbage, vongole kalguksu (clam noodle soup), and two perilla oil potato pavés. Each dish used its Korean ingredients differently, which made it fun to try them one by one over lunch.

Where is Out of Order in Seongsu, and what are its hours?

Out of Order is within walking distance of Seongsu Station. The restaurant is on the 2nd floor of the building.

• Address: 2F, 2 Achasan-ro 13-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, South Korea
• Hours: 11:30 - 22:00
• Break time: 15:00 - 17:00
• Lunch last order: 14:15
• Dinner last order: 21:15
• Reservations: Naver / Catch Table

You cross the street from Seongsu's main strip to get here, so it sits just outside the busiest stretch. We booked ahead since we went on a weekend.

What is a weekend lunch at Out of Order like?

Walking in, the first thing that caught my eye was the big window. Being on the 2nd floor, plenty of sunlight came through, and the whole space felt bright during the day.

Just one street over from the bustle of Seongsu's main road, the meal felt unhurried and relaxed. We went a little past the weekend lunch peak.

Plenty of tables were wrapping up their meals, but new guests kept coming in too.

Even past the lunch peak, customers kept steadily arriving, which made me think reserving ahead is a good idea on weekends.

This is the bar seating — I liked the little touch of a bag hook you can spot in the back.

Out of Order lunch menu and what we ordered

Orders are placed by scanning a QR code.

There were several dishes built around Korean ingredients, like snow white kimchi fried rice and doenjang carbonara sujebi (hand-torn noodle soup). We ordered from the lunch menu, but the dinner menu looked full of tempting options too.

We chose grilled napa cabbage (16,000 won), vongole kalguksu (16,000 won), and two perilla oil potato pavés. A single pavé is 9,000 won, and adding a second one costs an extra 7,000 won. We ordered two at once to share.

With the cabbage, kalguksu, and potato dishes each built around different ingredients, we decided to try them in turns rather than one after another.

Grilled napa cabbage at Out of Order, 16,000 won

We started by cutting into the grilled napa cabbage. The thick cabbage is grilled and served, so on its own it tasted clean with a mild sweetness from grilling.

Once we loaded it up with the accompanying sauce, the flavor changed completely. It seemed to be a Chinese-style sauce blending majang (fermented bean sauce) and chili oil, bringing both spice and savoriness together.

Pairing plainly grilled cabbage with a spicy, savory sauce felt like an unusual combination.

With cheese, perilla leaf, and pine nuts on top, you could really taste the blend of Korean and Western styles. I usually eat napa cabbage as a wrap or in hot pot, so grilling it thick and pairing it with sauce felt very different from the cabbage I know.

Vongole kalguksu with clams and crown daisy

Next was the vongole kalguksu. It came with clams and zucchini, so I tried the broth first.

The refreshing flavor from the clams came through first, followed by the spicy kick of chili. There was crown daisy (ssukgat) in it too — eating it together with the noodles released its distinctive fragrance all at once. What started as a clean, refreshing taste from the clams and zucchini turned into spicy heat and crown daisy aroma.

I was curious just from the name — kalguksu, a familiar noodle dish, with vongole added. Eating the noodles in clam broth felt familiar yet different from the clam kalguksu I usually eat.

Perilla oil potato pavé, the dish to order at Out of Order

The dessert-looking perilla oil potato pavé is made by layering thinly sliced potato. Looking at it from the side, you can see the thin layers of potato stacked one on top of another. Cutting in with a fork sliced through all the layers at once, and you could really feel the texture.

A potato pavé usually has a lot of butter in it, but Out of Order uses perilla oil as the highlight instead. Perilla seeds on top added a nutty flavor with every bite of potato, and it came with a shiitake sauce on the side.

Biting into the potato brought out a truffle aroma, followed by the mushroom flavor of shiitake and then the perilla oil and seeds. Adding perilla oil and seeds to a classic Western potato pavé made the Korean concept clear right away. We ordered two at once, which turned out to be perfect for sharing.

Three fusion Korean dishes at Out of Order: the verdict

After trying all three dishes, what stuck with me wasn't the ingredients themselves but how familiar ingredients were reimagined. The napa cabbage was grilled and served with a spicy, savory Chinese-style sauce. The vongole kalguksu paired clams' refreshing broth with chili and crown daisy for a spicy edge. The potato pavé had truffle aroma rising through thin potato layers, followed by the nutty flavor of perilla oil and seeds.

It was a comfortable spot for a sunlit lunch on the 2nd floor, just off Seongsu's main street. I'd gone to Out of Order wanting to eat familiar Korean ingredients done a little differently, and there was real fun in tasting them reimagined. By the end of the meal, I felt glad I'd made the trip.