Seoul Botanic Park hot pot with mild broth for kids: J's Pot Magok

Magongnaru COEX hot pot spot: J's Pot

Hot pot at COEX Magok, found after a walk through Seoul Botanic Park

J's Pot is a hot pot / shabu-shabu restaurant in the underground dining hall of COEX Magok (코엑스마곡). Now that cool breezes are starting to blow in fall, I suddenly found myself craving shabu-shabu, something we rarely went for in the heat of summer.

Walking home after a pleasant stroll through Seoul Botanic Park with the family in the autumn wind, we passed through the COEX Magok dining hall and came across J's Pot, a hot pot / shabu-shabu restaurant.

It happened to be dinner time and the weather had turned cool, so a warm soup dish sounded perfect — happily, we decided to go in.

Inside J's Pot Magok: the room and the panda at the bar table

Walking into the spacious restaurant, the atmosphere was a bit different from the shabu-shabu places we'd been to before,

stylish and casual, almost like stepping into an American casual dining spot!

The panda sitting on the bar table was so cute haha. The moment my kid spotted it, they were pointing and telling me to look, look, hahaha.

Honestly, it was so cute I kind of wanted to take it home with me.

Why the family chose the mild broth when dining with a child

Once we sat down and looked at the menu, J's Pot had a wider range of broths than other places, so there was plenty of choice depending on taste.

When people think of hot pot, the spicy, numbing mala broth usually comes to mind first, but since we were visiting with a kid, we chose a mild, non-spicy broth instead.

Even though it was mild, tasting the broth, it wasn't harsh or salty, but it was more richly flavored than expected — impressive.

The broth itself had depth, so even after simmering the ingredients in it, it tasted great on its own.

Individual pots at J's Pot Magok: everyone picks their own broth

Another perk of J's Pot is that it's personal hot pot, so even with several people, everyone can eat exactly to their own taste. Even when family members' preferences differ, each person can pick their own ingredients for their individual pot — so clean and convenient!!

We also ordered a bit of everything to our liking — meat, vegetables, mushrooms, rice cake, and noodles.

Once we started picking whatever we wanted, we naturally ended up with a ton of variety lol. What my kid picked was the cute panda-shaped tofu noodle.

I did order it partly because the panda shape was too cute to resist, but having a fun little detail like this added to a meal with a kid made it that much more enjoyable.

Mixing hot pot sauce from the sauce bar's recommended combination

As a proper hot pot specialist, J's Pot near Magongnaru had a really wide range of sauce ingredients ready for you to make your own custom hot pot sauce.

There were so many options that I was a little stuck on what to combine to make a tasty sauce, so at times like this, a recommended combo is basically the answer —

so I put together the sauce following the recommended combination, and it turned out to be a great match for the hot pot style.

The hot pot was already delicious plain, but with the special sauce added on top,

the flavor range felt like it widened so much that I ended up overeating without even realizing it~

Premium handmade meatballs at J's Pot Magok

At J's Pot you can taste premium handmade meatballs that are hard to find elsewhere — it was so touching to get to eat, after a long time, meatballs like the handmade ones I had on a business trip to China lol.

There's no comparing them to instant meatballs, so I really recommend you all try them too ^^

Would I go back to J's Pot Magok Branch?

We wandered in by chance after a walk through Seoul Botanic Park in Magok, and ended up having a much more delicious and enjoyable meal than expected.

Above all, being able to enjoy it in individual pots — much cleaner and more tailored to personal taste than sharing hot pot among several people — and having such a variety of broths and sauces to enjoy a rich range of flavors, felt really appealing.

This time we went with the mild version since we were with a kid, but next time I'd love to come back and try the spicy version too!