Whole Autumn Loaches in a Red Broth: Seoul-Style Chutang, Served on the Same Corner Since 1932
Push the sliding glass door in a Dadong alley in central Seoul and you step out of your shoes onto a wooden floor. The tables are low and the seats are cushions. From the kitchen comes the steady sound of an earthenware pot boiling over, and the smell of ox bone and beef tripe simmered for hours comes over the door frame with it. When the pot of red broth lands on the table, the steam rises to your face and fogs your glasses white. Drag a spoon along the bottom and a finger-length freshwater fish comes up whole. It is a loach.
At a glance: Yonggeumok · 24-2 Dadong-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul · 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. · closed on the second, fourth and fifth Sunday of each month · phone 02-777-1689 · the house dish is chutang, with fried loach as a side · a five-minute walk from Euljiro 1-ga Station on Subway Line 2, right beside the Cheonggyecheon stream · single portions available
Chueotang is a soup made with loach. The loach is a slender freshwater fish that lives in the mud of rice paddies and ditches. Its Sino-Korean name, chueo, is written with a character that joins "fish" to "autumn." The Korea Heritage Service notes the reading that the name comes from the fish tasting best in autumn. Having fed all summer, it puts on flesh just before winter, which is exactly now, so in a Korean restaurant in October this soup counts as seasonal food.
The name is shared, but the dish changes completely from region to region. The Jeolla version is thickened with soybean paste and perilla-seed juice; the Gyeongsang version boils the loach, mashes it, simmers it with vegetables and finishes it with sancho, a sharply aromatic Korean pepper. In both, the fish is ground and disappears into the broth. Seoul is different. Chilli powder is stirred into a stock made from ox bone or beef tripe, with tofu, mushrooms and squash added, and the loach alone goes in whole rather than ground. This house also puts yubu, thin tofu deep-fried into pouches, and thin wheat noodles into the pot. The broth is hot and closer to a beef soup than a fish one, and there is almost no muddy smell. The loach is cooked until the bones give way and crumbles under the teeth; roll the noodles through what is left and one pot stretches like two meals.
The shop opened in this neighbourhood in 1932. In more than ninety years it has not changed the way it builds its stock, and it kept the floor-seating room while high-rises went up in the next alley. A traveller eating alone has nothing to worry about here. Chutang is served one pot per person, so rice and side dishes arrive in a single setting. If you have ever been turned away at a Korean restaurant that takes orders only for two or more, this is worth remembering. What does deserve care is the closing schedule: the second, fourth and fifth Sunday of every month. That is three of the four Sundays in a typical month, so turning up without checking costs you the 40 minutes of walking around Euljiro and your dinner as well. On the other hand it stays open until 10 p.m., so a hot bowl is still waiting after a concert or a night walk.