Hongdae Korean restaurant for a calm gomtang lunch: Anok

Hongdae lunch: it is about how you use that one hour

Sometimes I feel oddly more tired after having lunch in Hongdae and going back to the office. It is not the food—it is how I spent that one hour, I think.

You lose 20 minutes waiting in line, finally sit down and have to raise your voice over the next table, then shovel down your meal in barely 10-odd minutes and leave. This is a place I found after all that.

Step out of Hongdae Station and move just a little away from the noisy streets, and suddenly there is a staircase. Above it, you see a tiled roof. You stop at the bottom and look around once, wondering if this can really be the place.

It is tucked into an alley in Seogyo-dong, and the sign is not especially eye-catching. Even with my map open, I walked one extra lap. Those of you who found this post by searching,

I can more or less guess why. Maybe you want to eat quietly and get back within your one-hour lunch break, or you are looking for somewhere to take your parents or guests.

Neither is easy to find in Hongdae, honestly. The places that come up in searches look pretty in photos but have lines, and then they are noisy once you get inside. Anyone who has put their name down at one of this neighborhood's well-known gomtang places and waited forever will know what I mean. So you end up going back to the same old place every time, or heading to another neighborhood. At Anok, a Hongdae lunch spot, things look a little different once you go up those stairs.

The calm of Anok beneath a tiled roof

The moment you step beneath the tiled roof, it is hard to believe you are right in the middle of Hongdae. I could see why people say it is a good place to bring older family members.

Inside the restaurant. Napkins and wet wipes.

Crushed pepper and salt.

The welcome on arrival was lovely. There were traditional landscape paintings hanging here and there, too.

I visited at around 1:30 pm, just after the main office-worker lunch rush.

Pickled gungchae (stem lettuce), kkakdugi radish kimchi, seasoning sauce for the soup, and napa cabbage kimchi.

Clear gomtang broth that stays clean to the last spoonful

Clear gomtang: ₩13,000.

They say it is simmered for 48 hours, but honestly, whether it is 48 or 24 hours, there is no way for a customer to verify that.

But you can tell in the last two or three spoonfuls. A hastily made broth turns murky and cloying at the end. This one does not. It is so clear that you can barely see any oil, yet one spoonful brings up a richer beef flavor than expected.

It was not salty, so I kept spooning up the broth on its own. There was a generous amount of meat too, so mixing in rice did not feel heavy.

How I found the flavor in Pyongyang naengmyeon

Pyongyang naengmyeon: ₩14,000.

Anok tops its Pyongyang naengmyeon with plenty of suyuk (boiled sliced meat). The broth is lightly seasoned, with a subtle buckwheat aroma. The buckwheat noodles snap easily, which is a characteristic of noodles with a high buckwheat content.

If you like bold flavors, the first chopsticks-full will simply taste bland. For the first few bites, I was wondering what this was too. But there seems to be an order to it. Eat two or so bites of noodles first, then drink the broth—only then does the flavor slowly come through. If you put anything punchy in your mouth first, whether it is a side dish or whatever, it covers the meat flavor and the broth tastes plain all the way through. The suyuk is best rolled up in the noodles and eaten in one bite. The mild broth suddenly comes alive.

Why we ordered braised pork tail too

Braised pork tail: ₩29,000.

We ordered one, and it was the best move. The sweet-spicy sauce had soaked in deeply, and it was cooked until there was not a tough bit. Even the fat was tender, so I kept reaching for it. Having something punchy between the mild naengmyeon and clean gomtang brought all the flavors to life. The portion was generous too—we were very full as a pair.

What to know before you go

Anok is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 11:00 am to 10:00 pm, and closed on Mondays. Last orders are at 9:00 pm. There is no dedicated parking, so you will need to use a nearby public parking lot. It is near Hongik-ro 13-gil in Mapo-gu, but as I said earlier, you may still get a little lost even with a map.

To sum it up: choose the gomtang if you love a rich broth, and the Pyongyang naengmyeon if you prefer something clean and light.