Korea Late Winter Sonata 2015 -Seoul - Tosokchon Ginseng Chicken (土俗村参鸡汤）

Mr Love totally fell in love with Samgyetang when we had it in Busan on 1st day of our trip. So much so that when I suggested to visit another famous samgyetang restaurant in Seoul, he was up to it.

The reason we plan a visit to Gyeongbokgong in the morning is to come here for lunch.

Direction are as follow:

1). From Gyeongbokgong station (Line 3), take exit 2.
2). Walk straight out of the exit till you hit the 1st intersection where there is a convenience store.
3). Turn left and you can see a traditional looking house. This is the restaurant.

View once you turn left

My guide book states to come here early at 10-11am to avoid the long queue and we reached at 11.30am where there was a crowd in the restaurant but no queue outside.

Was ushered in to our seats pretty quickly.

Roasting chicken

Main entrance

Street along the restaurant

 There are 2 kinds of seating. Tables with chairs and those without where you will sit on the cushion on the heated flooring.

We had no preference but sensing that we are tourists, the ushers tried finding those with chairs for us. It was full and we went ahead with the one without chairs.

Interior

Free flow side dishes

 There will be a blue card menu on each table and you can check out what to order on it. It will serves as the bill at the end since there is a number on the card and the waiteress will record your order per your table no.

We had wanted to try both the samgyetang an roasted chicken but was told that roasted chicken will not be ready till an hour later due to machine breaking down this morning.

Oh well, so we ordered 1 samgyetang and 1 seafood pancake to share.

Menu/bill

Excited to be sitting the traditional way

 Service here was prompt since I think they will have pre cooked alot of Ginseng chicken stew since it is the main dish of this restaurant.

It was piping hot when served and as usual, a small bottle of Ginseng wine came with it.

Ginseng chicken stew

 The samgyetang is really good, even better than the one we had in Busan. I couldn't pinpoint where exactly the difference is, but this is the better one if I were to choose. That being said, the one we had in Busan was good too.

Mr Love was so impressed with it that he kept drinking the soup, something that was not the norm for him since he dislike soup.

Super big pancake

 Pancake came next and we were impressed by the size. It was huge! Luckily for us, the ajumma who took our orders did not listen to my instructions properly. We had initially ordered 1 samgyetang, 1 roasted chicken and 1 pancake. I had told her specifically that if roasted chicken is not available then she can changed the order to 2 samgyetang and 1 pancake. She didn't and we had 1 less item in the end.

But since the serving here is so big, it was just nice for us.

Back to the pancake, it was generously filled with seafood and spring onion and pan fried to perfection. Mr Love was missing this ever since we came back from Korea.

Napkins

 We took the card to pay the bill after lunch and saw a crowd forming outside the restaurant.

Happy us after lunch

Queue forming

 While walking back to the station, we stopped by Etude house and Innisfree along the street to shop. While people had been raving about going to Myeongdong, I find the shops here having more promotions than Myeongdong branch. And the cool thing is, it was pretty empty and I had the whole shop to myself while picking out items for friends. Hehe.

 2 days later we came back again to Tosokchon as we went watching guard changing parade at Gyeongbokgong. Was even very hungry but Mr Love was pretty insistent about trying the roasted chicken that the guide book had recommended.

The funny thing is, we are the only table that didn't order Samgyetang and shared 1 roasted chicken only. The ajumma who took our order was a bit surprised by our order but didn't say much and left us alone.

Truth to be told, there is nothing special about the roasted chicken. In fact can be described as disappointing as the chicken was too dry for our liking.

Roasted chicken

Side dish

Am still missing the samgyetang as I typed this post :)