Ox bone soup or seollangtang is one of my favorite korean dishes. It's particular good for cold autumn and winter days. The soup is milky-white, achieved by many hours of boiling shank bones. Enhanced with heapings of green onions and some slices of beef brisket, the soup usually comes with kimchi and rice. It makes a great breakfast, lunch, dinner or supper. As this soup takes a lot of time and effort to make at home, I'm always on the search for good seollangtang restaurants.
I was thrilled to discover that Sinchon Seollangtang was in the Myeongdong area where our hotel was located. It was also open 24/7 which made it an ideal location for a late supper when all other restaurants had closed by 10pm. We got a little lost walking around the streets of Myeongdong looking for this place, only to discover it was just round the corner from the hotel! We knew we had found the place when we saw the red ropes outside (to manage the queue at peak hours).
Salt and pepper is laid out on the table as you are expected to season the seollangtang yourself. However, we discovered the soup was already naturally flavorful so only added a little pepper. We ordered a standard ox bone soup but also ordered an enhanced version with ginseng and red dates.
Both soups were outstanding. The radish and cabbage kimchi was also the best we had in Seoul. I like my kimchi fresh and not so fermented which was Sinchon's version. Both kimchi were in stainless steel containers built into the table - all you can eat. We also ordered some mandu dumplings (these were just so-so) and a kimchi pancake which was quite good. The soups are really the star of the show though.
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