After getting back from Jeju Island I decided it was time to get together with friends again, and after going back and forth on where to go we settled on Unbong Sanjang, famous for lamb, in Noryangjin. It has been featured several times on Nokjang’s blog, so plenty of people know it and quite a few have probably been. I happened to be craving lamb badly that day, but the deciding factor was that it is easy for the friends who live around there to come out.
Writing up a pile of blog posts all at once lately, I found that the photos I had taken of Unbong Sanjang a while back had vanished somewhere. Nothing makes me sadder than that.. So the image quality is a bit rough, but I am posting the shots I took with my iPhone instead. Some of you may have already seen them on Twitter..
Unbong Sanjang turned out to be farther from Noryangjin Station than I expected. It is easy enough to get there by bus, though.. I set out early, so I managed to arrive without being late.
Suyuk (boiled lamb)
This was the first thing we ordered after arriving, and while it is a little fatty it was delicious. It felt a lot like eating the ttagwi at Yeongchunok, if that makes sense. Somehow it seemed like it would go with soju, but it was a hot day so we started with bottled beer.
Lamb chops
This is the restaurant’s main dish. I believe this was the first time in my life I had lamb chops medium rare, and they are as tender and full of juice as good beef. I could not believe lamb could be like this. The price is reasonable too, so it looks like a good choice whenever you want meat.
The drink of the day..
I brought it along to use up the bottles left at home, and maybe because a blended whisky goes down easily, it paired well with the lamb too. I had the first glass straight and cut the second one with a little water.
After a thoroughly good first round, for round two we went to a place right across the way with the simple name Dakbaljip (“Chicken Feet House”). It is famous in this neighborhood and apparently always packed. Our group had to wait a good while before we could sit down. The name says chicken feet, but besides dakbal they sell all kinds of street-stall snacks. Since it was the second round we kept it simple with soju and a few dishes, and the prices on the menu were unbelievably cheap and generous. (I was bored so I added up the price of every item on the menu, and it came to 81,000 won..) It is not just the portions and the prices – the taste is above average too, so we ordered dakbal, gyeran-mari and chicken gizzards and put away soju without limit. I can say this flatly: I have not seen value like this anywhere in Seoul lately. Which makes losing the photos of this place hurt all the more. Then again, maybe a place this famous is better left off the blog. It is already bursting at the seams, and if even more people turn up it might get in the way of their business. Anyway, it is far from my place so I do not know if I will get another chance to go, but for anyone living nearby I think this is useful information.