Seoul Station hot pot restaurant, great minari roe pancake: Yunseul

Today I came for dinner to Yunseul (윤슬), a shabu-shabu place near Seoul Station that's known as a good spot for meetups. A friend from Busan was in Seoul for something, so we'd arranged to meet up here.

The reason Yunseul felt like such a welcome sight is that I used to work around here in my twenties. Seeing the old building torn down and replaced with such a handsome new one brought back memories of those days.

Where Yunseul is at Seoul Station, and the vibe for groups

Yunseul, the Seoul Station shabu-shabu spot, is on the 1st floor of Grand Central. When you come in through the entrance there's a Tim Hortons café, and if you take the elevator up from there, you're on the 1st floor.

I booked ahead on CatchTable before visiting. Maybe because it was 5:30 pm, the place was quiet, so I snapped a photo of the interior too. It looked like a good place for a get-together or a work dinner as well.

The floor-to-ceiling windows gave it a nice atmosphere. It's an easy walk from Seoul Station, and the tables are spaced fairly generously too.

There are tables where several people can sit together, so it looked like a good option if you're hunting for a meetup or team-dinner venue near Seoul Station. Above all, the biggest plus was how easy it makes meeting up with people whose train times are all different.

It wasn't noisy either, so it worked well for people like us, catching up over dinner with a friend we hadn't seen in ages. The food matters, of course, but when you're picking a place to meet, you can't ignore accessibility and atmosphere either. On that front, it ticked the boxes as a Seoul Station meetup spot.

Ordering the spicy assorted seafood jeongol and minari gon-i jeon

We ordered at the kiosk.

We thought about getting shabu-shabu, but ended up ordering what was recommended for dinner: the spicy assorted seafood jeongol (hot pot, ₩45,000) and the minari gon-i jeon (₩13,000), a savory pancake made with minari (Korean water parsley) and gon-i (soft fish roe).

The food came out right away. The seafood jeongol had one big abalone and a good amount of fresh gon-i and fish innards. There was a generous heap of minari too, which made it nice and refreshing to eat.

There are three dipping sauces. Personally, the chili sauce on the right went best with it.

I'd been planning to order the suji muchim (seasoned beef tendon) I'd seen in other reviews of Yunseul as a Seoul Station meetup spot, but as it happened they brought it out on the house, so I got to try it. It was chewy, and the smoky, charred aroma really got my appetite going.

So how does the spicy assorted seafood jeongol taste?

Time to try the main dish, the spicy assorted seafood jeongol, right? Taste-wise, think of it as altang (spicy fish roe stew) and you won't be far off.

The ingredients — abalone, gon-i, innards and so on — looked generous, but the broth was more ordinary than I'd expected. With a name like "spicy assorted seafood jeongol" I was expecting something rich and fiery, but it wasn't actually that spicy.

Cooking the minari in the broth added a lovely fragrant note, and if you like gon-i and innards, fishing out the ingredients and eating them with the sauces should be perfectly enjoyable.

The minari gon-i jeon was the real standout

The minari gon-i jeon in particular was delicious. Maybe because the gon-i is chopped finely and pan-fried into a pancake together with the minari, the texture was better and it tasted better than when you have it in a stew or hot pot.

We were going to add rice or noodles to finish, but it turned out kalguksu (knife-cut noodles) was already included. It was nice that you get your carbs in without having to order a separate rice or noodle dish.

Yunseul is close to Seoul Station, the interior is clean, and several people can sit comfortably, so it made a good meetup venue. If I come back, I'd like to try the shabu-shabu we didn't get to this time, or something else on the menu.

If you're looking for a place near Seoul Station to meet friends or hold a work dinner, compare the menu and prices and give it a try.