COEX date-night Korean restaurant: whole octopus in cabbage, Obongjip

Today's food lamp is shining on a Samseong Station favorite — Obongjip Samseong Branch❗️ I was really craving proper Korean food, so my boyfriend and I finally visited this famous octopus stir-fry spot I've wanted to try forever. So excited we finally made it😍

Obongjip Samseong Branch: location, hours and parking near COEX

Obongjip Samseong Branch is at 62 Teheran-ro 81-gil, 1F, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, near Samseong Station and COEX mall. Hours are Mon–Thu 16:00–23:00 and Fri–Sun 16:00–24:00. There's no dedicated parking lot, so use the nearby Samseong-dong First Parking Tower.

What Obongjip Samseong looks like outside and inside

Here's the exterior❗️ True to a proper local favorite, the sign has a photo of the founding mother on it. 38 years of her hands-on cooking — can't go wrong with that, right?

The interior❗️ It's really spacious and clean, and like the photo on the right shows, some areas are wall-divided — not quite private rooms, but private enough.

What a couple ordered: the Nakji Obong Special

The menu❗️ Since we're both big eaters, we went with the 'Nakji Obong Special' — octopus stir-fry for two, small bossam, and jaengban makguksu together.

⭐️Cute little event⭐️ Leave a receipt review + save the post and you get free crispy fried chili peppers🤤 There's also a no-lose lucky draw, so everyone should join in!

Seaweed soup, banchan and how the self-bar works

After ordering, they bring out seaweed soup and various banchan first. The seaweed soup is really good — sipping it between bites of octopus stir-fry is a perfect combo👍

There was ssamjang, chili, garlic, and salted shrimp for the bossam, plus bean sprouts. Mixing the bean sprouts into the octopus stir-fry sauce is basically a double-happiness event🫪

The sausage was salty and didn't really pair that well with the octopus or bossam. But the white kimchi and other side dishes worked great — pile them onto the octopus stir-fry.

Extra banchan can be grabbed from the self-bar, and there's a rice-cooker-looking thing next to it that turned out to hold the seaweed soup — good to know❗️

Is the small bossam at Obongjip really this big?

The bossam finally arrived❗️ They call this small... are you sure?! The portion was huge. No off-flavor at all, moist, soft, and tender🤤 The real kicker was the bossam kimchi and radish salad next to it — absolute legend.

Wrapping the moist pork with those was so good I nearly teared up…💦

Fire-grilled octopus stir-fry with a whole octopus inside the cabbage

The fire-grilled octopus stir-fry❗️ At first it was mostly onions and cabbage, and I thought — wait, is that all the octopus there is? But the twist comes soon👇

Oh my… octopus, aren't you gorgeous(?)💗 A big chunk of octopus was hiding under the cabbage. I loved that Obongjip puts in a whole octopus rather than pieces😍

Rice has to be ordered separately — grab some roasted seaweed flakes from the self-bar, toss in bean sprouts, octopus stir-fry, sesame oil, and mix it all together for pure heaven❗️

The octopus was chewy and plump, and the sauce was excellent right off the bat — pass👏 Sweet and spicy, seriously addictive!! Confirmed Samseong Station favorite😍

Where the jaengban makguksu fell short

The makguksu (buckwheat noodles) portion was reasonable, and it tasted like the makguksu you get at jokbal places❗️ But while we were busy cutting octopus and mixing it into rice, we didn't pay attention to the noodles and the noodles went double-soft on us…🥹 It might work better if they served the noodles a bit later in the meal — that would make them taste so much better!!

Still, piling bossam and radish salad on top of the noodles like this is delicious, seriously delicious!!

So that's the full Nakji Obong Special❗️ The octopus stir-fry and bossam portions were especially huge — my boyfriend and I barely managed to finish it all😂 We both ended up stuffed like piglets🐷🐖

Our verdict on Obongjip Samseong Branch

• The octopus was plump, not chewy-tough, and soft
• Overall portions were generous
• The banchan lineup was great
• Definitely order rice — mix it with seaweed flakes, sesame oil, and octopus for an instant octopus rice bowl, so good
• Seasoning was just right, not too salty, genuinely delicious
• Being able to self-serve extra banchan from the bar meant we never ran short of anything we wanted
• Eating the octopus together with the bean sprouts especially kept the texture alive — crunchy and spicy, loved it
• One spoonful of the seaweed soup right after something spicy wipes the heat away instantly — genuinely addictive, well-seasoned too
• The bossam meat was tender and soft, and paired with what tasted like house-made kimchi and radish kimchi it was amazing. That tenderness was the highlight
• Adding somyeon (thin noodles) into the octopus stir-fry would probably be great too

If you love octopus stir-fry, go check out Obongjip😍