Jongno sushi with three gunkan and kaisendon for two: Choe Uyeong

Where is Choe Uyeong Sushiya Jongno Branch? 3 minutes from Jongak Station Exit 1

Choe Uyeong Sushiya Jongno Branch is at 7 Jongno 5-gil, B1 Unit 104, Jongno-gu, Seoul (128 Cheongjin-dong), South Korea, 235m and about a 3-minute walk from Exit 1 of Jongak Station. There's free parking for 2 hours, takeout and delivery are available, it's fine for groups, restrooms are separated by gender, and mobile payment works too.

The premium sushi at Choe Uyeong Sushiya Jongno Branch has thick neta across the board, so there's real bite to every piece. By the time you finish it you're full enough that you don't need to order anything else. Kaisendon comes with nori on the side so you wrap up the sashimi on top of the rice, and the mixed sashimi is cut nice and thick. We ordered all three — premium sushi, kaisendon, and mixed sashimi — and both the taste and the price made it feel worth it. It's easy to visit alone for lunch, and the inner booth seats work well for a group at dinner — a solid sushi spot near Jongak Station.

Choe Uyeong Sushiya Jongno Branch sits in the basement of the Tower8 building. Corkage is reasonably priced too, so it's easy to bring your own wine or liquor to enjoy with the meal.

You can order sashimi, sushi sets, kaisendon, and tempura — a wide range — and à la carte sushi starts at ₩1,000 a piece, so you can pick just what you want.

Counter seats for solo diners and tablet ordering at every seat

The dining room at Choe Uyeong Sushiya Jongno Branch is split into a bar-style counter and regular table seating. Each seat has its own tablet, so ordering alone is easy and the atmosphere is comfortable for solo diners.

Ordering is done through the tablet at your seat. You can add sashimi, rice bowls, sushi sets, à la carte sushi from ₩1,000, tempura, and drinks straight from the screen, and takeout can be arranged on the same screen too. We ordered the 15-piece premium sushi set, kaisendon, and mixed sashimi.

Each seat comes set with a water cup, utensils, soy sauce, pickled ginger, and takuan (pickled radish) to use as needed.

Once you're seated, miso soup comes out first. It had fried tofu and scallions in it and was warm — a nice light starter before the sushi.

You help yourself to as much pickled ginger and takuan as you like from the side dish container. A bite between sushi pieces cleans the palate nicely.

What's in the 15-piece premium sushi set? Uni, negitoro and ankimo gunkan

The 15-piece premium sushi at Choe Uyeong Sushiya Jongno Branch comes with one piece each of tuna, flounder, red seabream, squid, scallop, eel, egg, and gunkan (nori-wrapped) pieces, laid out evenly. The gunkan are three types: uni (sea urchin), negitoro (minced fatty tuna), and ankimo (monkfish liver).

The premium sushi comes as fifteen pieces, and every single one has thick neta. The portion is generous enough that the sushi alone leaves you satisfyingly full.

The white fish has visible grain to it, giving good bite.

The eel is seared on the outside and glazed with sauce, and the egg is lightly torched.

Starting with the tuna — the neta is thick, so with each bite the tuna's savory flavor comes through richer the more you chew.

The egg sushi is moist and soft, nice to pick up between other pieces.

The red seabream has a chewy bite to it.

The squid is scored before serving, so it's tender and gets subtly sweeter the more you chew.

The white fish is clean-tasting with a deep savoriness.

The uni gunkan is packed generously with sea urchin right up to the edge of the nori. One bite delivers that distinctive rich, creamy, savory uni flavor.

The ankimo is softly mashed on top, with a different kind of deep, heavy savoriness than the uni. It has a soft, dense texture like liver, and just one bite delivers intense flavor.

The 40,000-won mixed sashimi, cut thicker than the sushi

Next up is the ₩40,000 mixed sashimi. Flounder, red seabream, tuna, salmon, squid, shrimp, and crab meat all come on one plate.

The neta on the sushi is already on the thicker side, but the mixed sashimi is sliced even thicker than that, giving it a much better chewy bite.

The crab meat — not the processed imitation kind, but with the grain intact like real snow crab, and clean-tasting too.

The red seabream is sliced with the skin left on — the flesh is soft while the skin side is chewy, so together they give a nice contrast in bite.

The salmon comes with shredded onion on top — one bite of the fatty salmon with crisp onion made a good combination.

Kaisendon you wrap in nori yourself

Next is the kaisendon (seafood rice bowl). Salmon, white fish, crab meat, fried shrimp, egg, and flying fish roe are all piled generously on the rice, with nori served separately.

The raw shrimp sashimi is chewy and springy.

Kaisendon comes with nori on the side, so I wrapped up salmon and flying fish roe together. The savory salmon with the popping texture of the roe was delicious.

Just crab meat wrapped up on its own — one bite.

Savory fatty tuna belly with sweet squid, wrapped together in nori, made for a great combination. Visiting as two, ordering several dishes like sushi, kaisendon, and mixed sashimi to share worked well, and since each dish had different fish and a different composition, we got to try a good variety.

What should two people order at Choe Uyeong Sushiya?

Visiting Choe Uyeong Sushiya Jongno Branch as two and ordering the 15-piece premium sushi set, kaisendon, and ₩40,000 mixed sashimi to share let us taste a good range of different fish and preparations across each dish. The premium sushi had such thick neta that one set alone was filling, and the kaisendon was great for wrapping sashimi and flying fish roe in nori. The mixed sashimi was sliced even thicker than the sushi, so we got to properly enjoy the texture too.

There's a range of seating, from counter seats good for solo dining to inner tables, and it's close to Exit 1 of Jongak Station, making it a good sushi spot near Jongak Station to drop into for a solo lunch or a dinner out.

• The premium sushi, with its thick neta and satisfying bite — filling enough on its own
• A satisfying spread across sushi, kaisendon, and mixed sashimi, each with different fish and textures to try
• A sushi spot near Jongak Station that's easy to visit whether alone at the counter or with a group at the tables