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Myeong Dong Kyoja (명동교자) ~ Myeong-dong on Deliciouslogy | Wordpress.
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Now on to Myeong Dong Kyoja.
A lot of the restaurants we ate at in Seoul have a lot of history and Myeong Dong Kyoja is no different.
Starting off in 1964, they commercialized a traditional Korean noodle dish, kalguksu. Kalguksu is a unique type of noodle where the noodles, made of wheat flour and eggs are chopped to form flat noodles.
Myeong Dong Kyoja is also known for their mandu, a Korean meat and vegetable dumpling sometimes filled with tofu in place of the meat (like at Gwangjang Market).
Wei Chee and I were no doubt very excited to try this place as it came highly recommended by Pauline (she's eaten here before) and she said that no other mandu can beat Myeong Dong Kyoja. After trying the mandu here, we couldn't agree more. The steamed mandu was adequately filled with flavorful meat and vegetables, not overpowered by the taste of leek.
The kalguksu also came as a surprised. Super smooth noodles in a tasty broth had us constantly going back for more soup. The minced meat was flavored with sesame oil, giving the dish a rich flavor. This was immensely comforting after we stepped out of the rain. The dumplings here are wrapped differently but had the same filling as the steamed mandu.
The bibim guksu was a first for all of us and we watched in fascination as the waiter used a pair of scissors to cut the somyeon to shorter lengths. Eaten cold, the bibim guksu had a spicy bean sauce mix topped with thinly sliced cucumber and a dash of sesame seeds and sesame oil. Eating cold noodles was a little weird for us (even though we come from a country where summer is all year long) but the noodles were tasty and for me, a welcomed sight with all that chilli!
One downside of this place - if you're not a fan of strong garlicky kimchi, do not try the kimchi here. The 3 girls at my table (minus me of course) tried the kimchi, gave a shudder and proceeded to push the dish far away.
Myeong Dong Kyoja is a definite recommendation from me. After all, the best mandu and kalguksu in Seoul is hard to pass.
Directions to Myeong Dong Kyoja are available on the Visit Korea website while other reviews are available here, here and here.
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Here's a summary of what we ate during our trip, click the image below for a larger view.
Kindly compiled by my extremely efficient travel finance manager, the excel sheet for the above image is available here.