Shabu kalguksu for three with a fried rice finish in Busan: Yunujae

One afternoon's discovery is Yunujae Munhyeon Shabu Kalguksu.

Where is Yunujae Munhyeon Shabu Kalguksu, and is there parking?

Yunujae Munhyeon Shabu Kalguksu is at 26 Suyeong-ro, Nam-gu, Busan, South Korea, units 158-161 of Daerim Munhyeon City Plaza. It's open daily from 11:00 to 20:50, and there's 1 hour of free parking in the underground lot.

Inside Yunujae: seating that suits a family meal

The interior of Yunujae Munhyeon Shabu Kalguksu has generous space between tables, making it a nice spot for a family meal. When we visited, there were a lot of family groups there, and we came as a family too.

House-made noodles you can watch being cut

Yunujae Munhyeon Shabu Kalguksu makes its own noodles in-house. The noodle room is left open so you can see inside, where the pre-made kalguksu (hand-cut noodles) and sujebi (hand-torn dough soup) are neatly wrapped in plastic.

Yunujae Munhyeon Shabu Kalguksu menu and prices

Shabu kalguksu is the main dish. It's ₩11,000 per person, and per person you get 70g beef sirloin + vegetables and mushrooms + self-made kalguksu + fried rice.

You can choose between the red broth or the white broth. The red one is a broth made with bone broth plus sun-dried chili, giving it a savory, tangy-spicy kick — apparently this is the signature broth. You can pick your spice level. The white one is a clear broth deeply simmered with anchovy and kelp, also available in mild, regular, or spicy.

We chose the signature red broth. If you run out of anything while eating, you can add extra portions of anything.

What the shabu kalguksu table for three looks like

Our three servings of shabu kalguksu get set up. The sujebi sitting on top of the noodles already looks chewy and delicious even before cooking.

I really love noodle dishes, but my stomach is a bit sensitive, so I try to balance how much flour-based food I eat. I hadn't had noodles in a while, so today I rolled up my sleeves and got ready to eat.

Even the basic side dish, gosogi, looks great with its bright red color. We followed the recommended way to eat it as instructed. You do have to cook it yourself, but it's not complicated, and the flame is strong enough that it cooks quickly.

Beef first, then the hand-cut noodles and sujebi (hand-torn dough flakes)

First the broth is brought to a boil, and once it's boiling, the meat goes in and gets eaten first.

Once it's boiling hard, we dip the meat briefly in the broth and pull it out before it gets tough.

My sibling goes for the meat, while I focus on the mushrooms.

Once we've eaten a decent amount of meat, in go the kalguksu noodles and sujebi together. Plop.

We bring it back to a rolling boil. It's cooked well so the noodles don't have a raw-flour smell.

The moment it's cooked, everyone's chopsticks get busy. Slurp, slurp — the self-made kalguksu noodles are just the right amount of chewy and soft, going down so easily. I think I ate the most noodles.

Enough for fried rice at the end, with no extra noodle order

Last comes the fried rice. At first we said if the portion felt short, we'd add extra kalguksu noodles, but as we ate, we felt fuller and fuller, so with the fried rice included, the portion seemed just right — we didn't end up ordering anything extra.

We cooked the fried rice well, adding a little of the kalguksu broth bit by bit, topped with stir-fried kimchi and gim (dried seaweed). Since everyone in the family likes things not too salty, we kept the fried rice on the saltier side this time.

It's a fried rice where the stir-fried kimchi seasoning is the star. It's close to kimchi fried rice in flavor, and it's delicious.

Why the eating order suits a family watching blood sugar

Being able to eat protein first and carbs after meant the family members who watch out for blood sugar spikes could eat comfortably and happily. Because of our family history, we need to manage blood sugar, but everyone also loves noodles and carbs.

So we've been paying a lot of attention lately to the order in which we eat, and it happens that the order you need to follow to enjoy Yunujae's shabu kalguksu the best is the same order that helps prevent blood sugar spikes.

One afternoon's discovery was Yunujae Munhyeon Shabu Kalguksu, with its chewy, soft self-made kalguksu noodles.