Song-rim Restaurant Pork Bulbaek

Post by Chiefeater Luke Soon

Some of Seoul’s best-value meals are found where the taxi drivers park, and Song-rim Restaurant or Songrim Sikdang in Jayang-dong is the original. I came with fellow Chiefeaters Peter and Kiseok, who have been eating here since their high school days, so this place has been feeding them for four decades at least. You can’t ask for a better endorsement than that.

The stretch it sits on is known locally as the Taxi Driver’s Street. A few other eateries have sprung up along it over the years, and they compete hard for the drivers’ custom; some even offer a car wash while you eat. But Song-rim is the OG, and it shows. The police station directly opposite (you can see the 경찰 sign through the dining room window) “allows” taxis to U-turn across the road into the restaurant. That tells you how much pull this place has with the city’s cabbies.

It occupies the ground floor of the granite-clad 松林 Building, with two stone dol hareubang guarding the door. On the wall are a Gwangjin-gu Good Restaurant certificate and an Oraegage plaque, the city’s badge for long-standing neighbourhood businesses. Inside are long timber tables, each with a row of gas rings, a TV playing the news in the corner, crates of Cass and Terra stacked by the fridge, and an ajumma running the room from the counter.

There’s really only one thing to order: bulbaek, short for dwaeji bulgogi baekban, a pork bulgogi set meal. A domed black pan heaped with thinly sliced, soy-marinated pork arrives on the burner, and you cook it yourself. The marinade leans savoury rather than sweet, and the fatty edges catch and caramelise against the pan. When the pork is nearly done, you tip in the rice, lettuce and side vegetables, add a dollop of gochujang and go at the whole lot with scissors until it’s chopped into a rough, sizzling hash, then fry it down on the pan. It is messy, loud, steamy and deeply satisfying. Nobody explains the ritual to first-timers, which is why it pays to come with regulars like Peter and Kiseok.

Every pork order comes with free refills of seonji haejangguk, the hangover soup: a deep brown, beefy broth with big wobbly slabs of ox blood curd, soft ugeoji cabbage greens and a few strands of noodles. It’s rich and iron-heavy, and it’s a big reason to come back. A bowl of cool nabak kimchi, water kimchi with cabbage and radish, cuts through it all nicely.

The house rules are part of the charm. Each table is allowed just one bottle of soju, so nobody heads back out on the road under the influence; it’s a drivers’ canteen first and foremost. When you pay at the counter, you get a choice of a little yogurt drink or a ₩100 coin. The coin works the coffee vending machine outside, which is a hit with the older generation and their love of sweet instant coffee mix.

At around ₩10,000 for the bulbaek, this is honest, filling, no-nonsense Seoul eating, with forty-plus years of taxi-driver loyalty behind it. Go hungry, take the soup refills, don’t skip the fried rice finish, and choose the coin. Chiefeater Luke Soon rates it a solid 6out of 10.

Prices: Pork bulgogi set (bulbaek) about ₩10,000; seonji haejangguk and kimchi jjigae about ₩8,500 each

Must try: Bulbaek with the scissor-chopped fried rice finish, and the seonji soup refills
House rules: One soju per table. After paying, choose a yogurt drink or a ₩100 coin for the coffee machine outside.

Parking: Plenty, since it’s a drivers’ canteen

Naver Map: https://map.naver.com/p/search/송림식당 자양번영로

Address: 79 Jayangbeonyeong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul (서울 광진구 자양번영로 79), in the Songrim Building; the street plate reads 77-1. About 10 minutes’ walk from Konkuk University Station (Lines 2 and 7).

Business Hours

Monday to Friday
10:00 am to 10:00 pm

Saturday and Sunday

Song-rim Restaurant

https://maps.app.goo.gl/yKck75Vi6A8W34s46

79 Jayangbeonyeong-ro, Gwangjin District, Seoul, South Korea