Wood-fired chicken restaurant in Seongnam: Jangjakgun Main Branch

It suddenly feels as though fall has arrived lately. As the evening air gets a little cooler, doesn’t it make you want to sit outside rather than indoors~? When you have a whole chicken and something brothy while catching a cool breeze, even an ordinary evening can feel a little like you’re traveling.

Jangjakgun Main Branch (장작꾼 본점), one of the good spots around Dandaeogeori that I visited this time, was somewhere I could really enjoy that kind of atmosphere. So when the evening breeze is lovely like it has been lately, it’s a place worth keeping in mind if you’re looking for a Dandaeogeori spot for chicken and beer in an outdoor-pub setting.

What was the outdoor-pub atmosphere like at Jangjakgun Main Branch in Dandaeogeori?

Hours are 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays, and 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. on weekends.

Jangjakgun Main Branch is within a five-minute walk of Dandaeogeori Station, so it’s easy to visit even without a car.

When you arrive, the thing that immediately catches your eye is, of course, the firewood. This isn’t just fried chicken—they serve whole chicken roasted over wood with nurungji (scorched rice)!

There were stacks of oak firewood, and you could see the area where the chickens were actually roasted, so the atmosphere was clearly different from an ordinary chicken place.

What especially made me remember this as a good Dandaeogeori spot was the seating atmosphere. There are outdoor tables, so you can eat in the cool air,

and there were all kinds of tables indoors too! Even though it was early on a Tuesday weekday, this Dandaeogeori restaurant was busy.

The included sides were a combination that goes nicely with whole chicken: pickled chicken radish, yeolmu kimchi (young radish kimchi), and cabbage salad.

For extra side dishes, you can help yourself at the self-service bar.

Maybe no two nurungji chickens are alike under the sky, because the menu was so varied! The difference is mostly in the toppings, but there were spicy chicken corn, herbal, corn cheese, Cheongyang chili cream, scallion chicken, and more. I loved that even wood-fired whole chicken came in so many flavors!

Beyond chicken, there were whelk salad, chicken feet, and tteokbokki (spicy rice cakes), plus sides such as ramen and rice balls, so it was a great Dandaeogeori restaurant for trying a variety of things!

How did I enjoy the half-and-half nurungji chicken?

The main dish I ordered that day was the half-and-half nurungji chicken. Wood-fired whole chicken has the advantage of being mild, but if you eat one whole bird in only the original flavor, it can start to feel a little plain halfway through, right? So I chose half-and-half.

One side was corn cheese and the other was seasoned. Both are popular flavors, and I got to enjoy them at once! The outdoor-pub atmosphere really came through, and it was such perfect weather for chicken.

One way to enjoy it best is to eat the chicken breast first while it’s hot, and a staff member carved it for us, so it was even easier and more delicious to eat!

Because it is a whole chicken roasted over wood for a long time, it’s easy to assume the breast will be dry. But eaten straight away while hot, it was moister and more tender than I expected.

My husband only likes tender cuts such as drumsticks and wings, but even he ate the breast meat well that day~ With the half-and-half chicken, I had it once with corn cheese, once with the seasoning, and then with the seasoning and corn cheese together, so the different combinations made it even tastier!

And of course, draft beer! It was just an ordinary Tuesday, but it already felt as though the week’s tiredness had completely melted away, haha.

Jangjakgun’s whole chicken arrives on a stone plate, with a layer of nurungji underneath. There was more rice than I expected! The oil and juices from the chicken had soaked into it. Scraping up the remaining nurungji from underneath at the end is fun in itself.

I even rolled up the cheese and ate it, haha.

How was it with hangover ramen on the side?

Nurungji chicken alone is already quite filling, but I also ordered hangover ramen that day. Personally, when I’m eating chicken or whole chicken, I sometimes start craving a hot, spicy broth toward the end, and this did exactly that job.

After the rich, savory flavor of the half-and-half chicken, a spoonful of hangover ramen broth felt like it reset my palate, so the pairing worked well. It was especially nice outdoors. Eating hot nurungji chicken in the cool breeze and sipping ramen broth now and then was more satisfying than I expected.

On days like these, when it’s neither hot nor cold, eating somewhere with an outdoor-pub feel rather than sitting only indoors creates so much more atmosphere. Jangjakgun’s appeal isn’t just the nurungji chicken itself; the wood-fire mood, the outdoor-pub atmosphere, and scraping up that final nurungji from the hot stone plate all feel like one complete experience. So if you want something a little less heavy than fried chicken, or you’re looking for a good Dandaeogeori place to have a cool drink with friends, it’s a solid choice.