Dduck Sarang

If you are not Korean, it might be hard to understand why this porridge is big deal and how it’s different from a cheap (just a few bucks) hong-​kong style porridge you find in other chinese restaurants.
This place claims that they only use the best quality ingredient to make small quantity of all the dishes and items (like rice-​cake, dduk) like dishes they would make for their family.
To make a good rice-​porridge (juk) takes long time and efforts like risotto. It is also very good for just about anyone who would like to eat something easy to digest but nutritious.
If you like, try it someday. It’s hearty, comfort but not too heavy like mac and cheese:)
Not cheap, but you go for quality, I guess…

3.75
Probably all Asian countries have some version of rice porridge (Chinese congee/​zhou/​juk, Japanese okayu, Vietnamese chao, Filipino lugao…). Enter the Korean version, juk (pronounced jook).
There is quite an extensive list of juk to choose from, ranging from tuna and veggie, abalone, or mushroom juk to butternut squash, red bean, black sesame juk. It’s my understanding that the juk base may be different depending on what type you get, but I could be wrong.
Rice porridge is kind of hard to mess up in general, and can range from bland or simply seasoned to more like a thick stew. It seems like juk is more towards the latter. The versions with some sort of seafood and veggies are thick and hearty. Servings come with a tasty side of kimchi and another veggie side. Portion size is quite big and left me satisfied.
Prices were around $ 8 for most of the types of juk. That’s a bit higher than your standard bowl of congee, but the juk is more flavorful and heartier than what you’d find at a typical Chinese place.
Apparently this place also specialize in seol leong tang (beef bone soup) and there was a large sign in cringe worthy Engrish describing the preparation. I’ll be back to compare the one here to the one at Gamasot.

You’ll probably need to read Korean in order to recognize this place, but if you read carefully, you’ll see in English «Korean Traditional Cake & Porridge Restaurant».
Only stopped in to buy some dduk or rice cake. It was toward the end of the night so the shelves were understandably a bit bare with only 2 or 3 selections of dduk. Taste and texture was exactly what you would expect but there were designs and varieties of dduk we hadn’t seen before… not surprising I suppose since it does «specialize» in dduk.
The interior was nice, clean, spacious, and relaxing with dark wood furniture and floors… traditional, yet modern. Probably the place parents would go to, not kids.
I did see a poster for pot-​bing-​soo, so I’m guessing they sell it there, along with sul-​lung-​tang. Definitely gonna hit this place up again to see how the food is.

This was such a wonderful place to eat. I have never had anything quite like their tuna and vegetable porridge. It’s just right.
Obviously that’s a really corny Goldilocks reference. But it’s so comforting. The waitress also steered me away from the mussels and seaweed porridge and to the tuna, because the former wasn’t fresh. Always nice to have recommendations. I am going to want to try more flavors (there are at least 15 varieties or more). The porridge is basically rice that’s been cooked and cooked until it starts dissolving. They add the various flavors to it, such as abalone (also really good). It doesn’t have a ton of spiciness to it, but it’s a savory, comforting blanket in a bowl.
They have other dishes as well — and advertise their beef bone and tripe soup on the door. It’s a calm, enjoyable place to eat, really enchanting.
They have amazing looking cakes and pastries and desert looking stuff. I’ll save that for another time.

If you are looking for something warm to eat, have the porridge here. They have spinach, tuna, kimchee, beef etc… types of porridge you can choose from and also other traditional korean dishes. Porridge = rice soup. You dont get all the side dishes like other korean places, about 3 kinds to put in your soup. As a fellow non-​korean speaking customer, its better if you go with a korean speaking friend since i think there was only one person who spoke english there. ^^ Service was good and the prices were fair. Also, grab some rice cakes on the way out to take home.