Kunjip and Cloud Social Rooftop Bar

Gop Chang Chigae

On my day out with my two cousins, I suggested we go out to eat at Kunjip, a Korean restaurant located in K-town. I know that Kunjip had some really good reviews online and I could see that they had a lot of satisfied customers. The waiting line was probably twenty minutes overall on a Saturday afternoon. The waitstaff was very courteous to us and they were also extremely busy. I was expecting them to refill our tea, but they never did that once. However it was easy to call them over so I can't say that they were entirely inattentive.

My cousin's beef and rice cake stew.

My biggest mistake that day was ordering the gop chang chigae. It's a spicy stew with ox intestines, rice cake, udon, some kimchi, tofu, scallion, and enoki mushroom. Sounds good doesn't it? Well it actually did taste pretty good. The only problem was that it was so spicy I couldn't handle it. I thought that since I handled spicy soondubu before, this should be ok, but clearly my spice tolerance wasn't that high. I did however manage to eat all the stuff in the stew since I'm paying $15.95 for this. I want to replicate this at home in the future though since it gave me some good ideas. Some of the intestines didn't taste that great. It gave abit of a bitter taste, but beef stomach as usual is always good. Drinking ginger ale every time you take a bite out of chigae means you're not cut for it. Kunjip served us purple rice with beans which is much more classier than your usual white rice. I should have finished it, but I couldn't that day. It was fluffy and not grainy in the slightest.

Our banchan that day was pretty good as well. We had kong jorim (braised black beans), a dried squid soaked in hot sauce, broccoli, sweet braised potatoes, bean sprouts, spicy cube daikon, and house kimchi. Since I couldn't handle my chigae, I couldn't fully enjoy the banchan and I wished I could have eaten it all. It felt like such a waste. I had a cube daikon and it was really nicely pickled. It was very crunchy and the taste of the brine had fully seeped in. The kong jorim was really good too with its sweet flavor. The dried squid had a very nostalgic feeling for me because I haven't had it in a long time. Later during the meal, Kunjip provided us with an egg dish in a stone pot which is a banchan that not a lot of restaurants serve. I felt honored and wished I had finished that too.

We went out on a rainy sleet day and we needed a place to sit and talk. Our lunch time wasn't a good time to talk since we were busy eating. That's when we yelped for a place and Cloud Social Rooftop Bar popped up on our search. It is located on the 17th floor of Nyma Hotel. This open air is fairly new, three months according to the bartender. It's a bar/lounge. Since it's the winter, the bar is now enclosed and insulated with warm air. It was just us three at the bar enjoying drinks and a long talk. Happy Hour is $6 drinks. I got myself the Happy Hour special, Stella Artois. The drinks on the menu are either $8 or $12. Pricy indeed. I took a small sip of my cousin's drink. He had ordered a hot chocolate with an extra kick in it. It smelled good and I felt that burn of alcohol down my throat.

I probably wouldn't go back to Cloud Social unless I had a really fat wallet. I do want to go back to Kunjip and order something that I can handle.