We kinda felt like having abalone porridge for lunch, and opened up Naver. Lo and behold! What do we know? We were literally a 10-minute walk from a tiny restaurant whose menu only has abalone porridge. Yay!!! Chok, jok, juk. This is Asia and her various iterations of porridge in different cities.
While I know that abalone porridge is called 'jeonbokjuk', I can't read the words. Oof! I don't even know the name of the restaurant. I've learnt that Korean shops and restaurants' social media handles usually have nothing to do with their names. This restaurant is called 죽이잘맞아, which I copied and pasted here. Of course I have no idea how that is read or pronounced in Korean. Google translates 죽이잘맞아 into 'It's a good fit'.
The restaurant does Empress Abalone Intestine Porridge. Its menu offered a choice of the number of abalones in the standard portion of 300g porridge. It also clearly stated the portions and number of abalones and how each person should have one bowl in English and Mandarin. No confusion there! I ordered three abalones for ₩28,000 and was pleased. Then I thought, I should have gone for broke and ordered FOUR abalones for ₩34,000. Haha. This was absolutely satisfying.
I like this porridge since it wasn't too watery, unlike a few other versions. It should be properly chok, congee, kinda thick, and not like Teochew porridge which is just tasteless rice grains in water. This iteration is also not too salty. Like many Korean restaurants, they go light on the salt in soup and porridge. They always give you extra salt at the side if you need it. It was fine for me — I didn't need to add extra salt. But I didn't mind the saltier fermented side condiments to nibble with each spoonful of porridge. This was definitely one of the best meals I've had!
34 Samil-daero 32-gil
Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea (Use NAVER to navigate)
T: +82 2-741-2005
Hours: 8.30am to 3pm. Closed on Mondays.
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