Pungnam Golbaengi in Euljiro's Sea Snail Alley
A Filipino friend came to visit Seoul, and while figuring out where to eat dinner, I looked up restaurants near their accommodation in Myeongdong. Myeongdong has tons of great places, but instead of the nice restaurants I wanted to go to, they wanted a place where Seoulites drink after work, like a pojangmacha (street food tent) or a robatayaki. Where can you even find a pojangmacha these days... No matter how much we walked, we couldn't find those street tents you see in K-dramas, so we went with the second option: "a place where Seoul office workers drink after work that looks like it could be in a drama." Ah... grabbing a meal is so difficult.
Staring intently at the map, I found the Euljiro Golbaengi (sea snail) Alley nearby. Sea snails are probably something only we eat, and it's the perfect anju (drinking snack) that goes especially well with somaek (soju and beer bomb) they kept singing songs about somaek, so it was the perfect spot. We entered the Euljiro Golbaengi Alley, which was deserted since it was a Saturday with no office workers around, but strangely, exactly one place was packed. I went over to check the name, and it was "Pungnam Golbaengi."
Honestly, they don't even boil the sea snails themselves; they just open a can and toss it into a salad, so I wondered why there were so many people. Sure enough, it had been on TV. It was even featured on a show hosted by Baek Jong-won, the guy who basically picks where people myself included eat these days, so it was bound to be crowded. Even so, every other place was completely empty while this one was packed. Seeing this abnormal distribution of customers, I couldn't help but feel a huge sense of anticipation and curiosity. The power of the media is truly amazing.
After ordering and personally mixing up some somaek for these Filipinos who were crying out for it, the rolled omelet and golbaengi muchim (spicy sea snail salad) came out. Since this was taking the place of dinner, we also ordered some noodles and mixed them in.
The sea snails here were a bit spicy for me, which made me sip a lot of alcohol. After a few bites, I realized you eat this place's dish more for the spicy shredded green onion flavor than the sea snail flavor. And I filled my stomach with the noodles, which had a strong hit of sesame oil. It's not incredibly different from other places; it's just that the noodles are boiled perfectly compared to the sea snail salads you'd eat anywhere else, and the shredded green onions are served nicely, like at a high-end BBQ joint. However, it seemed to be way too spicy for the foreigners. They barely had a few bites and just stared at their phones, so I roughly picked at the noodles and sea snails before we got up to leave. If you hate spicy food, you might finish your meal after just a couple of bites, so you need to think it over. Still, it's less spicy than the sea snails served at regular cheap bars.
Considering the price and the resulting quality, it's hard to say it's amazingly good. Of course, it's not bad. There's no difference with the sea snails since they just open a can, but the shredded green onions, noodles, and rolled omelet are definitely on another level compared to regular bars. The problem is that the price is also on another level.
I was going to just leave it as a place I tried once without writing it on the blog, but I wanted to leave a record about this Euljiro Golbaengi Alley itself, rather than just this restaurant. This alley is located in Euljiro, an area in Seoul packed with corporate offices, and it's a neighborhood that has operated for a long time, breathing alongside these companies. Therefore, it's not a place you visit purely for the taste; it holds a slightly special meaning for Seoulites, so I gave it a few extra points for that. The taste probably doesn't vary much from place to place, so you can just go to an empty restaurant or one where the owner lady looks nice. For reference, since this neighborhood has been catering to exhausted office workers for a long time, it's hard to expect highly refined, excellent service. They treat you better if you have a loud voice.