At work, we run a writing study group. We pick a variety of topics, spend two weeks each writing our own pieces, and then gather together to read them aloud and share our thoughts.
This time it was my turn to choose the topic, and I agonized for days over what to pick. I considered settling on a development-related topic, but with the "curse of knowledge," as the saying goes, and such a vast amount of development knowledge flooding into my head because of AI, I found myself wanting to step away from that subject for a moment.
While watching a restaurant YouTube show called "Ttoganjip" with my wife at home, I suddenly grew curious about where other people's "ttoganjip"—their go-back-again spots—might be. After wavering over whether the topic would work, I settled on "reviewing my own favorite spot" for this round. But once I'd chosen the topic, I then spent days agonizing all over again about where, exactly, my own favorite spot even was.
My Own Favorite Spot
Thinking about where my favorite spot might be, a few came to mind—but all of them were too far away to visit now. In the neighborhood I currently live in, though, nothing came right to mind.
Since I wanted to go back once more and eat before writing the piece, I thought of the restaurants I'd visited several times in the neighborhood. I hadn't set a rule of excluding franchises the way Ttoganjip does, but I didn't want to introduce my own favorite spot as a franchise restaurant, so I ruled them all out.
That naturally left one restaurant I'd visited most often. That place is "Sanseong Haejang Gukbap," located right in front of Exit 2 of Dandae Ogeori Station. Since it already has plenty of reviews, I did wonder whether it was okay to introduce it as my own favorite spot.
But in the four years since I moved to Dandae Ogeori, I'd visited at least ten times, and I recalled taking my parents there, telling them it was a great spot, when they came up from Andong. As I turned those memories over, I realized anew that this place was, in fact, my own favorite spot in this neighborhood.
Before introducing this place, I first want to talk about how I'll write the review.
When most people think of a restaurant review, they probably picture one that starts with photos of the sign and the entrance, then shows the menu and the food. Of course, I too took photos of the sign and the entrance, and photos of the food I ordered. But the menu and the interior of "Sanseong Haejang Gukbap" were hard to photograph—there were so many customers when I visited that I felt too self-conscious to do it.
It suddenly occurred to me to wonder whether I should write a restaurant review with only the sign, entrance, and food photos I'd taken. And then I thought—fitting for the theme of a writing study group—why not introduce my own favorite spot through writing rather than photos?
The introduction has already grown too long for something calling itself a restaurant review, but this piece doesn't stop at introducing a restaurant called "Sanseong Haejang Gukbap." In introducing my own favorite spot, I intend to introduce the taste I've come to know.
Sanseong Haejang Gukbap
When I first went to "Sanseong Haejang Gukbap," it was less a great restaurant to me than a place that called up a special memory. That was the fact that you can enjoy all three kinds of gukbap with a seonji (blood-cake) option. They sell jangteo-gukbap, soyang-gukbap, and suguré-gukbap at 10,000, 11,000, and 12,000 won respectively for the regular size, and for an extra 1,000 won you can upgrade to a gukbap with seonji added. If you order the extra-large, the prices are 14,000, 16,000, and 17,000 won respectively, and you can choose seonji at no additional charge.
In my elementary school days, my parents would seize any chance to load my younger sibling and me into the car and take us to a haejang-guk place about an hour away to buy us seonji-gukbap. The first time I saw seonji, I asked my parents what it was, and at the time they teased me that it was made by hardening a cow's nosebleed. I believed that for quite a long time.
It's been ten years since I came up to Seoul, but this was the first time I'd sought out a place that sells seonji-gukbap myself. Eating seonji-gukbap after so long, I could recall my childhood memories along with it.
When you step into "Sanseong Haejang Gukbap," you can spot something eye-catching on the wall. It's a notice written up about the health benefits of gukbap and seonji. Among them, seonji was said to be good for anemia and hangover relief, and to improve blood circulation, aiding brain function and helping prevent cardiovascular disease.
While looking around the place more closely than usual, thinking I had a restaurant review to write, my eyes stopped on one description of a gukbap.
"You, the gourmet! Have you still not known suguré? The gelatin between a cow's hide and its meat—collagen itself. Even slaughtering a whole cow yields only a tiny amount. If you've tasted suguré, you are a true gourmet."
The reason this writing surprised me is that, despite having come here many times, I'd never once tried the suguré-gukbap. It was only because I was examining the place more closely to write a restaurant review that I finally noticed a line I'd never paid attention to before. And that day, eating suguré-gukbap, I was reborn as a true gourmet.
The suguré-gukbap I tried for the first time that day was more than tasty enough to make my own favorite-spot list. At a glance suguré looks like a lump of white fat, but as the description said, you can feel the chewy texture and clean, savory taste distinctive of gelatin and collagen.
Also, when you order suguré-gukbap and soyang-gukbap, they come with a wasabi-soy sauce, and suguré and soyang dipped in it are a combination you never tire of, no matter when you eat it. The side dishes—kimchi, kkakdugi, onions, and garlic scapes—likewise make the haejang-guk's flavor stand out even more, playing an excellent supporting role.
And the seonji, which you might have forgotten after the earlier explanation, is a food made by coagulating and hardening the blood of a cow or pig. Because of the perception of it as blood and its distinctive appearance, many people seem not to prefer it. Perhaps because of my memories of eating it often as a child, I felt no great aversion even eating it after so long. If anything, I thought "ah, this is what it tasted like," and polished it off without leaving a bite.
When I got home and looked up the benefits of seonji and about seonji-gukbap, I learned that good seonji has no fishy taste, few air bubbles, and shouldn't be dry and crumbly. Recalling what I ate that day, there was no fishy taste at all, and in the photo I'd taken, there were no bubbles to be seen in the seonji either.
Honestly, I haven't gone around seeking out and eating at places that sell seonji, nor have I ever thought to compare seonji-gukbap spots. But from now on, if I come across a place selling seonji-gukbap, I intend to eat there with the posture of a true gourmet, comparing the taste and texture.
Finally, here at Sanseong Haejang-guk, seonji is, above all, optional. It's a place where you can feel plenty of satisfaction from the gukbap alone even without adding seonji, so I think it falls short of nothing in recommending it as a great spot.
Restaurant Reviews
The purpose of most restaurant reviews is probably to provide information about a restaurant and to make the reader want to go there and taste it for themselves. Now that I've finished writing, though, it occurred to me that reading this might not actually make anyone want to go to "Sanseong Haejang Gukbap."
It's also too long a piece to use as a reference for a restaurant review. On top of that, the thing I myself look at most when searching for a place to eat is the photos. I'd quickly skim through photos of various restaurants, pick the ones that made me think "that looks delicious," "I want to try that," and go visit. But writing my own favorite-spot review this time, I got to feel the fun of looking back at a restaurant I frequented through a different lens than usual.
And the seonji-gukbap place I went to with my parents as a child—like a restaurant story you hear somewhere—was, I heard, a shop a grandmother ran and passed down to her children; afterward the taste changed, customers dwindled, and it eventually closed for good.
Truthfully, it was so long ago that only the memory of having eaten seonji-gukbap remains; I can't really recall what it tasted like. But if I leave these favorite spots of mine—fading away into memory—recorded in writing, then even after time passes, might I not be able to recall more vividly what kind of place it was and what taste it held?
Perhaps the meaning of this review lies not in introducing a new favorite spot to someone else, but in leaving a precious memory for the me of someday.
"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect." - Anaïs Nin -