Over 76 years, this Namdaemun diner has mastered the art of Korean oxtail soup

Inside a narrow galchijorim (spicy braised cutlassfish) alley just west of Namdaemun Market in central Seoul, one diner is waging a solitary battle, serving oxtail soup in a neighborhood dominated by fish dishes.

Yet its presence is quite significant. The diner fills with customers seeking a hangover cure in the morning, a hearty lunch in the afternoon and a bottle of soju in the evening.

This diner is Jinjujip, a restaurant that has been in the business for more than seven decades across three generations, specializing in oxtail only, either in soup or braised versions. 

Oxtail soup is not a dish unique to Korea. In fact, the soup with thick and sticky broth of oxtail simmered for hours, is a common dish in the West as well, such as British oxtail soup in which the oxtail is often browned first and simmered with root vegetables, red wine, and herbs to create a rich, dark, and savory stew-like broth.

In Korea, oxtail soup — called kkorigomtang — is considered one of the country's premium beef broth soups. It stands alongside dishes like seolleongtang, known for an opaque broth yielded by boiling beef bones and meat, and gomtang, a clear soup prepared by slow-cooking the meat alone.

The signature dish at Jinjujip, which opened in 1950, is kkoritomak—a premium oxtail soup whose name translates to "chopped pieces of oxtail." While a whole ox tail yields about 18 to 20 bone segments, Jinjujip's specialty uses only the five thickest, meatiest cuts from the base of the tail, known locally as tomak.

The segments included in the restaurant's normal kkorigomtang dish are the mid- and small-sized pieces of the ox tail. 

Because of that difference, kkoritomak costs 34,000 won ($22) compared to kkorigomtang's price of 29,000 won. 

At this reporter's visit, the kkoritomak was served in a boiling hot ttukbaegi (earthenware pot) with two sizable tomaks submerged in sticky, thick broth.

At first, it seemed dexterous chopstick skills could surmount the challenge of removing the meat from the bone, but that strategy devolved into holding the piece with a bare hand and biting off every last bit of the meat.

"Next time, try the jan tomak instead of the big one," said Ha Yang-sook, 72,  who had run the diner since 1990 with her older sister Ha Mi-soon. A few years ago, they again passed down the diner to Ha Mi-soon's daughter, Kang In-sook.

"The founder of this restaurant was called 'Granny Kwon' and she considered my older sister [Ha Mi-soon], who was from the same hometown of Jinju, as her own daughter. At first, Jinjujip was located on the basement level of a vintage shopping arcade before moving to this location when it was passed down to me and my older sister," Ha said.

According to Ha, younger customers tend to prefer tomak No. 1, which has the most amount of meat, but those who really have a taste for the dish prefer No. 4 and No. 5, which have less meat but a chewier texture. "We usually put two pieces of the larger tomaks in one pot of kkoritomak or three to four smaller pieces — what we call jan tomak," she said.

Kkoritomak's broth is extremely sticky, as expected, to the point where one's upper and lower lips stick to each other when closing one's mouth. In terms of transparency, it is neither opaque nor transluscent.

"Oxtail dishes are considered premium because each cow yields only a small amount of tail meat, and the ingredient requires extensive preparation," she said. "If you just simmer the oxtail, it gives you sticky yet clear broth. That broth is subtle and refined in its own way, but customers seemed to prefer thicker, milkier broth. So we started blending broths made from knee cartilage, beef leg bones and assorted beef bones to achieve this color and texture."

Trimming oxtail bones is a laborious process. The staff at Jinjujip comes to work at six in the morning before opening the diner at 8 a.m. The intact oxtail bone is simmered for six hours before being separated into pieces. The diner uses top-grade oxtail imported from Australia.

The kick is the seasoned soy sauce topped with a generous amount of chives and minced garlic. It is the result of the Ha sisters' years of dedicated research and testing.

"We can't tell you the recipe for the sauce," Ha said. "We put in a bit of fruit juice, we can tell you that."

The goal of Kang In-sook, the current owner, is to run the diner until it turns 100 years old. 

"I don't think I have enough experience to significantly change something here. I still need my mom and my auntie," she said. 

"But I majored in art so maybe I can improve how we arrange the dishes and make them look more appealing."

BY SONG WEON-SEOP [[email protected]]