A note on the words: yukgaejang is a spicy Korean beef soup, and ban-gyetang is a half-size portion of samgyetang, a Korean whole-chicken soup. Shokudo means a plain, everyday eating house. Kkakdugi is cubed radish kimchi, dangmyeon are the springy Korean sweet-potato starch noodles, sundubu-jjigae is a soft-tofu stew, doenjang-jjigae a soybean-paste stew, seolleongtang a milky ox-bone soup, kalbi is short rib and bibimbap is rice with vegetables mixed in. Asa-nomi means morning drinking — yes, it is a genre here.
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Korean Restaurant Hamoni Shokudo on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
So, this is Hangover Meshi. This time, the Akasaka Korean food crawl series. Lately I have been making my own private project of going round the Korean restaurants of Akasaka in search of a really good yukgaejang, and this time I visited “Hamoni Shokudo,” close to Akasaka-mitsuke Station. Apparently it is open twenty-four hours, and twenty-four hours is quite something, ha. You could drink hard from the morning. It is a little way from Akasaka-mitsuke, at the back of a glittering building full of clubs and the like.
Inside, despite it being before lunchtime, there were already a few tables with the drinking under way.
How enviable!
Sundubu-jjigae 1,200 yen
Doenjang-jjigae 1,200 yen
Kalbi set meal 1,500 yen
Bibimbap 1,000 yen
Half samgyetang 1,500 yen
Seolleongtang 1,200 yen
Yukgaejang 1,200 yen
There is plenty on offer, but it has to be the yukgaejang!
And here is the set of side dishes that is standard at a Korean restaurant.
Pickles, potato salad and a slightly spicy something.
And here is where Hamoni Shokudo shows its true worth: they bring you so much kimchi it is almost absurd!
Big, chunky kkakdugi.
And this one, a great uncut piece of napa cabbage! You pick it up and it comes flopping out, and you cut it with the scissors provided as you eat.
This, this is what I mean!
Speak of Korean food and you speak of more kimchi than you can eat, help yourself. Wonderful.
The kimchi has a fairly strong sourness to it. It has been sitting a good while, or rather the fermentation has come along nicely. Delicious!!
And here is Hamoni Shokudo’s yukgaejang.
It looks even more loaded with ingredients than usual. There are enoki mushrooms laid on top, but the residual heat cooks them through nicely. There is dangmyeon in it, and basically all the yukgaejang around here come with dangmyeon added, do they not. It makes for a different sense of volume. The seasoning is perhaps a touch less spicy than usual. A good soup with the richness of beef.
Give it a stir and it settles into a nice-looking bowl. Looks delicious.
The beef is cut fairly fine, though not quite to threads.
The ban-gyetang is lightly seasoned, but pepper and salt come with it so you can take it wherever you like.
A chicken soup with real depth, and very good indeed! This may be exactly what people mean by a nourishing flavor.
Perfect for resetting the body.
Hamoni Shokudo, this is impressive. Getting this along with that mountain of kimchi for 1,200 yen is quite a bargain. And if you are drinking, kimchi they hand out freely doubles as something to nibble on, so of course this place is popular! (Not that it is not already popular.) On top of that they are open twenty-four hours, which makes them unbeatable. Next time I go asa-nomi I think I will make this my spot! Glad to have found a good place.
Korean Restaurant Hamoni Shokudo (Korean / Akasaka-mitsuke Station, Akasaka Station, Tameike-sanno Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.7
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
