Tucked on the side streets behind YBM and Pagoda English schools, is a sign all in Korean for Ddukbaegijip. In the restaurant's front window, you can see a huge grated gas stove, usually with about a dozen pots of soup going at once, and an old lady working furiously to heat every dish just so. At lunchtime, there might be a line going out the door for this tiny little restaurant, but it's worth the wait.

Dduk bae gi jip means hot pot house, and this place proves the principle that the shorter the Korean restaurant's menu, the better the food is.

There are only four items on the menu, all four are soups, and all four are amazing. The kimchi jigae and the sundubu jigae are my personal favorties (and with that I've named half the menu), it comes with a few side dishes, and while it's spicy to begin with, at the table is a big pot of red pepper paste, in case you want to make it spicier.

The decor and design are rustic, country-style, with wooden frames and tables, and that brownish plaster on the walls; the main purpose of the decor is to fit as many diners into a small space as possible, and the service is in Korean, as is the menu, but it's quick, seeing as the goal of the place seems to be to feed its amazing soup to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

You can't order a glass of wine, or even a coke: water's the drink there, but if spicy, hearty Korean soups, made in the way Koreans like it, and served in the classic, no-frills, get-it-done style of Korean lunch restaurants is what you want, you can't find a better soup lunch.

When I had one day to show authentic Korean food to a food blogger from the famous food website Serious Eats, I took her here (there are pictures, too):
http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/06/snapshots-from-south-korea-soondubu-stews-ddukbaegi-jip-seoul.html