Nowon sushi buffet with cheese-baked oysters and lemon sorbet: Kuu Kuu

I decided to visit Kuu Kuu with my sushi-loving dad and my youngest sibling. I'd heard the Nowon branch was really good, so I was excited haha

Parking at Kuu Kuu Nowon and the walk from Hagye Station

The parking lot entrance for Kuu Kuu Nowon Branch is at the back of the building, and parking at the Seoul Onchun Building lot gets you 2 hours free. You MUST register your parking before you leave after eating!!⭐️ After that it's ₩4,000 per extra 30 minutes.

🐢If you're coming on foot, it's about a 10–12 minute walk from Exit 2 of Hagye Station on Line 7, so it's nice as a little stroll. If that feels like too much, take the bus to 'Hagye 1-dong Community Center' stop — it's just a 2-minute walk from there, so I'd recommend it!

Inside the 6th-floor buffet hall and opening hours

Kuu Kuu Nowon Branch is on the 6th floor of the building. 📍Hours are 11am to 9:30pm on weekdays, and until 10pm on weekends.

As soon as we walked into Kuu Kuu Nowon, I liked the overall wood-and-white tones and cozy atmosphere. The space, over 300 pyeong, was especially great for getting around comfortably. I thought it would work fine for group gatherings, family meals, or even private rentals! Looking around, true to its reputation as a Nowon family-meal spot, there were a lot of guests visiting with kids or older family members.

They had baby dishware and high chairs too, so it looked like a good place to bring kids.

A staff member guided us to our seats, and they put us close to the food.😁

Weekday dinner for 31,900 won with unlimited draft beer

We came for the weekday dinner after 5pm (₩31,900). The standard dining time is 2 hours, but if there are waiting guests, it's limited to 1.5 hours.

The first thing that caught my eye was the free unlimited draft beer! You can get unlimited Terra and Kelly draft beer. If you leave a Naver receipt review, the unlimited beer — worth ₩5,900 — is free, so if you're a beer lover it might be worth doing😋 Both my dad and my sibling drove, though, so we sadly skipped it!

Sushi corner: flounder, salmon, botan shrimp and yukhoe sushi

Kuu Kuu is famous for its sushi, so I took a good look around first! The variety was really... insane.🫪

My favorite flounder and salmon sushi apparently now come in bigger cuts than before, so I grabbed them for my first plate right away — my mouth was completely full of flounder and salmon!🥹 The flounder was chewy and the salmon was mild and rich.

The shrimp sushi apparently uses botan shrimp instead of regular shrimp, and sure enough it wasn't thin shrimp at all — it was plump with a nice bite, which I liked! The yukhoe (Korean-style beef tartare) sushi wasn't topped with seasoned shredded beef but with raw beef sashimi. It was fresh and less gamey than I expected, so I enjoyed it haha

There were also tons of rolls and gunkan (battleship sushi) haha

The raw salmon sashimi Dad came for

The raw salmon sashimi was what my salmon-loving dad was most looking forward to. Apparently this menu isn't even available at the Kuu Kuu Gold branch! I had some too, but dad especially loved how fresh and delicious the raw salmon was haha😋 It was thick, filling your mouth with salmon, mildly rich, and delicious both with the tartar sauce and dipped in chojang (vinegared chili sauce) too lol

On the side there was soy sauce, chojang, wasabi, seaweed, and sesame oil. Apparently Kuu Kuu's sashimi soy sauce is a patented sauce, too😋

Meat corner: lamb chops, smoked duck and smoked pork shoulder

Then we ran over to the meat section lol

Tender, flavorful lamb chops and smoked duck were apparently new additions. Next to them was smoked pork shoulder-neck (mokjeonji), which had a really tasty sauce and a good balance of fat and meat! I wondered what mokjeonji even was, and my sibling told me it's the part connecting the neck and the front leg lol

Pizza and pasta had a smaller presence, but there were so many other dishes that I never felt like anything was missing.

The en croûte soup — this one had an unusual look lol. According to the description, it's a dish where pastry bread wraps around the outside with soup hidden inside. My sibling tried it and said it was good! When I went back for more later, it had already sold out.🫪

Top pick 1: cheese-baked oysters and steamed oysters with chojang

There was a seafood-and-grilled section, and my recommendation here is the oyster dishes!! There were two kinds — chojang-steamed oysters and cheese-baked oysters — and honestly this was a dish I'd been curious about after reading another blogger's review. They said it shouldn't be tucked away in a corner lol

But when I tried it — oh!! I was surprised it wasn't fishy at all. The cheese version was more flavorful than the chojang one, with that sweet-savory balance — delicious!⭐️ It had cooled down a bit, so I imagined how amazing a freshly made one would taste... My sibling, who can't eat oysters because of the smell, even said 'this is good? Even people who can't eat oysters could eat this' lol

Made-to-order jjamppong (spicy seafood noodle soup)

The made-to-order menu had jjajangmyeon, jjamppong, udon, and cold buckwheat noodles (miso soup was self-serve). My sibling picked jjamppong here. The noodles were a bit soft, but the broth was spicy and just so good lol

Among the various grilled dishes

Top pick 2: dongpa-jok and clams steamed in wine

My picks were the dongpa-jok and the clam wine broth⭐️ Dongpa-jok is pork trotter made in dongpo-rou sauce. But honestly, cooked with trotter meat instead of the cut usually used for dongpo-rou, it was genuinely delicious.🫪

The meat soaked in sauce was soft and moist, but the real star was the skin. I'm a skin person, so I picked pieces with a high skin ratio, and it was so chewy with that sweet-salty sauce that I actually said it was insane.🥹🥹🥹 I don't have the courage to make it myself, but if somewhere sold this I'd go buy it lol. For anyone who's good at cooking... buying trotters and making dongpo-rou sauce to cook them would probably be amazing too😋

With the clam wine broth, I first grabbed just a little of the clams to try, and — yes, this is it!! — the salty clams got me, so later I went and found a small bowl to scoop up the broth too lol. Spicy and salty, I kept going back for more. If it's too salty, you could probably pour in some hot water from the water dispenser haha. It was near the end of dinner time, so my sibling and I basically cleaned out that clam wine broth... lol

There was also a good variety of salads and simple side dishes. The yukhoe was here too lol

Desserts: bingsu, waffles, melon, marble ice cream and lemon sorbet

There was bingsu (shaved ice dessert), and self-serve waffles too

There was also a good variety of drinks — coffee, tea, slushies, and so on. There was even a purple ube drink lol🤭

Dessert fruit and sweets. My sibling recommended the melon, saying it was really sweet, and it really was like honey lol⭐️ Dad ended up eating just the melon too haha

Marble ice cream and sorbet. Marble ice cream apparently used to not be available at lunch, but now it is! Sounds great for bringing kids during school break lunches haha. And the sorbet!! I really love refreshing ice cream, so for dessert I only had the strawberry and lemon haha. Personally, the lemon sorbet, studded with little bits of lemon, was genuinely delicious. Highly recommend⭐️

Is Kuu Kuu Nowon worth it? A verdict after three plates

This is what I ate lol. I usually only manage two plates, but here I had three plates plus sorbet and was stuffed..! Felt like a total pig..🫠 lol. The dishes I went back for seconds on were dongpa-jok, oyster bake, and clam wine broth⭐️

I only took a couple of quick shots of dad's and my sibling's plates before giving up lol. They probably went back for more at least three times as much as what's in the photos.😁

I was surprised the sashimi was fresher than expected. Honestly, since I'd always thought 'Kuu Kuu = sushi buffet,' I hadn't expected much from the other dishes, but I ended up really enjoying them lol. I'd never seen a buffet with sorbet for dessert before, and the lineup here was so full that I was satisfied.😋 This is a place even people who don't usually eat much sushi could easily enjoy haha