Apgujeong Sundae Gukbap Restaurant Dammiwon: Boiled Pork and Soup Rice

As the cool breeze starts to blow in the morning and evening, gukbap naturally comes to mind. Why is that? It really is strange how, the moment a little cold wind blows, food with hot broth suddenly comes to mind. The sunlight is nice during the day, but unlike summer, the wind is chilly, so the weather feels just right. On days like this, I should pack a lunchbox and go on a picnic, but in reality, I am surrounded by rectangular walls. So I am trying to go out for lunch, at least.

Dammiwon Boiled Pork and Soup Rice, famous as an Apgujeong sundae gukbap restaurant, was even more well known because it offered takeout and operated 24 hours a day. But I heard that due to COVID, it is now only open until 9 p.m. COVID really seems to have naturally changed many things in our lives. We still cannot enjoy life as we did before COVID, but I think we are gradually getting used to life after COVID.

Although it is a sundae gukbap restaurant, Dammiwon serves various kinds of gukbap, and there seem to be many kinds I have never even heard of.

As always, I ordered Dammiwon’s basic dish, sundae gukbap. Unlike other sundae gukbap, Dammiwon’s sundae gukbap is characterized by its white broth. If you want a spicy red broth, you can ask for the seasoned paste and add it in. But I like the clean broth, which does not smell like pork at all thanks to Dammiwon’s special broth recipe, so I eat it without adding any extra seasoning.

Dammiwon’s sundae gukbap has a light sprinkling of perilla seed powder on top, and just looking at it, the ingredients seem plentiful. That is probably why Dammiwon’s sundae gukbap is so popular. At other places, when the food comes out, you often cannot really see any solid ingredients. But at Dammiwon, you can tell at a glance that it is generously filled, so although it costs 9,000 won, it seems like a great gukbap for a satisfying meal.

Let’s take a look at how plentiful it is. It is so generously packed with head meat as well as sundae that you can feel full without even finishing an entire bowl of rice.

The only thing I add when I eat at Dammiwon, the Apgujeong sundae gukbap restaurant, is chives. There was not much chives in the default serving, so I gave my portion to one person and asked for a refill. The other side dishes at Dammiwon can be refilled by taking them yourself from the self-service bar, but only the chives need to be requested from a staff member.

When you think of hot broth, gukbap is what comes to mind. Among those, sundae gukbap is the first thing that comes to my mind. Sundae gukbap seems like the kind of dish that should be easy to make well, but it is surprisingly hard to find a place that makes it delicious. Dammiwon, though, is a place that I find delicious every time I eat there. Thanks to the cool weather, even after finishing the sundae gukbap, I did not feel hot at all, which was just right.