3-dae Samgyejangin in Gyodae: Chicken Soup & Stew
I had been saving this restaurant to write about on Boknal (the hottest days of summer in Korea), but I forgot and am writing this after a random visit in November. There are a few places selling samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup) near Gyodae and Seocho stations, but only about two are actually worth recommending. One of them is the place I'm talking about today, 3-dae Samgyejangin.
Personally, I want to focus on their sous-vide dakbokkeumtang (spicy braised chicken) rather than the samgyetang, so I'll talk about the braised chicken first.
The sous-vide cooking method suddenly became popular in Seoul, reaching a point where sous-vide machines are selling well. I'm not sure if they adapted to this trend or if they've been doing it for a long time, but Samgyejangin has a menu item you won't see or hear about anywhere else: sous-vide dakbokkeumtang.
They make the chicken breast incredibly moist using the sous-vide method, then simply "place" it on top of the pre-boiled spicy braised chicken stew. Since sous-vide is a method that retains a lot of moisture, boiling it deeply in the stew is a shortcut to ruining an expensive meal. You just let it simmer slightly without stirring, then scoop some broth and vegetables onto your personal plate and dip a piece of chicken into it. Dipping it in sauce is good, but it's delicious just dipped in the stew broth. Visually, it looks very spicy, but it's not that spicy and actually leans on the sweeter side. If you eat it with soju, a whole chicken disappears in a flash, so you have to savor it as much as possible.
The sous-vide spicy braised chicken is a bit difficult to eat for lunch. Most office workers have a fixed one-hour lunch break, and both the cooking time and eating time are too long to fit into that. Eating it leisurely for dinner and finishing with fried rice at the end is the best way to wrap up the day. (Of course, you'll probably go for a second round of drinks after this.)
Actually, the main dish at this restaurant is samgyetang. The nearby Bullojip is run by the second generation and this place by the third generation, so this family really knows their stuff when it comes to health foods.
Personally, I hate pine nuts and mugwort, so I always eat the mung bean samgyetang, but this is a place I want to visit often even when it's not Boknal. Of course, I say this, but the price is so burdensome that I've only been able to come three times a year. (I even only went because I had guests.) You'd think the mung bean samgyetang would be chalky because of the mung beans, but it's really not. You can eat it with the meat, cleanse your palate with kimchi, and polish off the bowl cleanly, making it very easy to finish a whole serving in no time. It's not a traditional-style samgyetang, but I think it's worth eating here on at least one of the three Boknal days.
