Kimchi jjigae restaurant: Jang-ggo-bang

Kimchi jjigae (김치찌개) restuarant, 'Jang-ggo-bang(장꼬방)' is located at Seocho-dong, Seoul.

It's near my workplace, so I could drop by at lunch time one day. Dishes are inexpensive (considering it's located in Gangnam area) and neat.

Basic setting. Pickled sesame leaves(절인 깻잎), Kimchi(김치), and Gim(dried seaweed,김). Gim is not the usual salted one, but what you eat with soy sauce. These three are all good. Before they serve Kimchi jjigae, it is happy to eat these dishes with rice. Especially we liked the Kimchi.

It is Kimchi jjigae which this restaurant is specialized for. Unlike usual restaurant in Korea, they serve a small bowl of the jjigae for each person, not a big pot for several people. Hence it is easy to eat and neat. The jjigae is made of mature Kimchi (most important material, 묵은김치), Welsh onions, and pork. Both the basic dishes and jjigae look simple but taste wonderful.

Big yellow one is Korean egg roll (gyeranmari, 계란말이) which is similar to omelet. We ordered one egg roll with one Kimchi jjigae for two people, and we finally ate all the Kimchi jjigae but gave up eatting the egg roll completely up.

Beside the entrance of restaurant, you will see a woman keeps on making egg roll, which is quite interesting to look at while you are waiting for the seats empty.

Nurungbap(누룽밥) and Sungnyung(숭늉) are self-serve. You can eat as much as you like. Additional rice (밥) is also self-serve and no extra charge. People who eat a lot may like this restaurant. :)

Kimchi jjiage with mature kimchi, which is quite common cuisine, is modernly recreated here. There are some resturant which says "Our specialty is blah~ blah (우리는 뭐뭐뭐 전문입니다)" but actually we find no specialty on them. Unlike those, Kimchi jjigae is really specialty of Jang-ggo-bang. On the sign, they say food is made of fresh materials from Jeollabukdo province(전라북도). I don't know I should believe it 100%, though, it gives more points.