South Korea 2022: Famous Gamjatang, Café Hopping (ft. Maison Kitsuné) & Tamburins

day 10

Bright and early to start this day (not really)! But we were headed to this famous spicy pork bone soup (gamjatang) place. We were in yet another new area - the journey here was quite a bit - some transfers and quite a bit of walking within the subway systems. It was such a nice sunny day outside today, good weather really makes or breaks a day. Anyway…

We went to Somunnan [45 Yeonmujang-gil, Seongsu-dong 2(i)-ga, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, South Korea], apparently a lot of famous people have eaten here before. If you don’t want to wait in a line, I suggest you arrive at like 10am. We got there around 11:30 and we had to wait for maybe 20-30 minutes before we got seated - there was quite a line. We got seated because they opened their second seating area. We walked a few blocks to a back area and got seated there - I don’t think it was the main restaurant but like supplementary?

They had different sizes of the gamjatang - we ordered the medium. It came with kimchi, radish kimchi, and some cucumbers and Korean peppers with soybean paste on the side. In the actual gamjatang, there were the pork bones of course, potatoes, enoki mushrooms, perilla leaves and some green onions. Also, I think if my memory serves me right, there was some bok choy or some sort of vegetable on the bottom of it.

What was so interesting though was that the center of the table had this plate on it - it was maybe the thickness of a coaster? It was metal and once you put the pot on it, it started to boil. It was the most interesting thing. I know it might work by induction or that sort of thing but there’s usually some bulk with that type of tech right? There was NOTHING directly under it, under the table - so I found that so interesting.

Anyway, the kimchi here was better than the few other times I’ve had it. The radish kimchi was a bit stringy - maybe it was like old radish being used? Not sure. The soup wasn’t too spicy but you could definitely taste the amount of spice. There was quite a bit of pork bone and it had a surprising amount of meat on them. Of course we ordered a bowl of rice for each person. The cucumbers and Korean peppers (which weren’t spicy - it was more crunchy and a bit green in taste) with the soybean paste was a nice refreshing bite for the meal. Overall the meal was tasty and surprisingly filling for the medium size for 3 people. I’d say if you only had to wait 30 mins or so, worth going here but if you had to wait over an hour? Probably not. Solid 7/10 meal.

After the meal, there wasn’t anywhere specific we wanted to eat or do. So it was up to us to explore and go wherever we felt. We walked back near the subway system and stopped by a, you probably can guess by now, a café! (lol) We stopped at Haru & Oneday for some caffeine [92 Achasan-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, South Korea].

They had a bunch of delicious looking desserts but we had just finished with our gamjatang meal… so we didn’t end up getting anything to eat. I ordered the caffe latte, my mom got the americano and my sister got.. what looks to be a caramel macchiato. The café was quite big! You could totally come here and work for the day - I think I saw a few students studying in there? Nothing much to say about this particular café - drinks were pretty typical, tasty, good atmosphere though! We sat for maybe half an hour and then headed off to our next stop.

We stopped by the Apgujeong area. I think this area is one of my favourite places. There are tons of brand name shops and smaller shops lining the main street and smaller streets. It feels clean, open, high-end and hip to me? I definitely recommend stopping and shopping in this area!

Not surprisingly, we had to stop by another Tamburins as I was still on the hunt. Outside the store we see this HUGE poster of our star miss Jennie Kim (lol) WE STAN! Tamburins/Gentle Monster, that whole store and their concept always has such an interesting display inside - Canada could NEVER. They had a whole HORSE inside this store. The tail was moving and it was blinking as if it was real - of course this was not a real horse. But it was interesting to see - any relation to Tamburins?? Probably not but it was still cool (lol).

They had all their candles, hand creams, perfumes and sanitizers in this store - just Tamburins. THANKFULLY they had Chamo at this store! I was so happy to finally have found it. According to Fragrantica, this mainly has: floral, aquatic, musky, sweet and herbal accords. From what I can smell… it smells floral and herbal first and foremost and then as its drying down, you get the sweet, fresh and an alcohol-y note - similar to like hand sanitizer? It’s not a scent profile I usually go for, so it was definitely a standout in my collection. I only got the 10mL size and that was about $50.

We just walked up and down the streets of Apgujeong - doing a lot of window shopping. Again, none of us had goals or plans to buy anything like “oh I’m shopping for clothes” or anything like that, so just browsing to see what sparks our interest. We kept walking past the Maison Kitsune and I noticed there was also a café in there. So we went. The area in there was secluded and it was quite nice. The Maison Kitsuné café had its own merchandise and we also walked up to check out the actual Maison Kitsuné store. There were a lot of nice things but again I wasn’t really in the market to buy clothes - especially not clothes that I can get here/order in Canada. My sister saw a bag there that was really nice and when we checked it out of SSENSE, it was much more worth it to get it there instead of buying it in Korea. Though we were able to feel it and touch it at the store.

After a quick browse, we walked back down and ordered a few drinks in the café.

The drinks were 100% for the aesthetic. They were quite expensive, about $7 for a drink? They were good but it wasn’t anything special, you know? We ordered an iced matcha latte, an americano and a caffe latte. The outside had a nice seating area - would be better if it was warm and sunny though! The tables were a bit shaky and the chairs - more like stools were… chairs… (lol). As you can see from the photo, there was a lot of greenery and plant life. One annoying thing was there were mosquitos in the area… so we tried to finish up our drinks quicky.

One other interesting thing here though was the bathroom? You had to enter a code to go inside, which isn’t the interesting thing here but when you stepped in - there was the sink/wash basin but then there was another door to enter the toilet. OK IM SAYING ITS INTERESTING BECAUSE wouldn’t you have expected it to be together? Like would you have someone enter and just wait in the sink area for the toilet while someone could be pooping their brains out? I just found that odd (lol).

That was really it for our day today, after Maison Kitsuné café - we just went home and stopped by the McDonalds at Seoul Station. I don’t have an aesthetic photo, so see the ugly photo I have but I got the shrimp burger combo AND I got a churro of course. The shrimp burger wasn’t as tasty as the one I had in Japan but it was still tasty. The churro - I definitely recommend you pick one (or 10) up. I usually love the McDonalds fries but I think our 10 minute walk back to our Airbnb was too much for the fries to handle, they got all soggy (lol).

Anyway.. until the next one!

-Thomas