One place that never fails to be mentioned when it comes to discussing Seoul's top 3 meat restaurants is Namyeongdon, located in the city's Yongsan district. Our initial guess was that it was an up-and-coming new restaurant, but as it turns out, Namyeongdon has been operating in the same place for 30 years since the current owner's father's generation. News Square sits down with owner Jeong Jae-beom to hear the story of Namyeongdon, from its start as “100 Million Charcoal-Grilled Ribs” to its “Pretty Pig” days and on to its current incarnation.

My father was the executive chef of Nampo Myeonok. Later on, he opened a restaurant called “100 Million Charcoal-Grilled Ribs,” on the very site where Namyeongdon now stands. Growing up as a kid watching my parents struggle running a restaurant, I thought that I myself should never run a restaurant business. My father was also against such an idea. One time, my father taught me how to make naengmyeon (Korean cold noodles) for about two weeks, but his intent was for me to never do it as a profession. One would know how hard it is if they tried their hand at it. After learning it, I became even more convinced that running a restaurant was not my career path. For my university education, I even chose a major completely unrelated to the restaurant business.

Later, when my father passed away in 2001, my mother took over the restaurant as sole operator. It was very difficult for my mother to run the restaurant alone, which used to be run chiefly by my father. At that time, I was running a civil engineering business, but it just also happened to be a time when the business wasn’t doing well. My mother asked me if I wanted to take over the restaurant. Consequently, I entered the restaurant business thinking that I should return to civil engineering work after stabilizing sales at the restaurant.

Nope. On the site of where “100 Million Charcoal-Grilled Ribs” used to be, I opened a new meat restaurant called “Pretty Pig.” It was a branch of a chain, but its sales were higher than other branches. Because for my restaurant, I did not receive meat from the head office but instead sourced good-quality meat separately from a different place. After sales at the restaurant stabilized to a certain extent, I entrusted its management to my mother and went back to civil engineering. However, without me at hand to pay attention to the restaurant's operations, its sales slowly began to drop. About two years after my withdrawal, the restaurant’s sales almost hit rock bottom, so I decided to quit my job and focus on my family's restaurant business.

From my father, I learned something more valuable than how to run a restaurant. Ever since I was very young, my father took me to restaurants run by his colleagues. They were all talented and renowned, and thanks to that, I was introduced to high-end food at a young age. Usually people who make a living in the restaurant business tend to rarely cook at home, but my father often cooked at home. He even cooked Pyeongyang naengmyeon at home. I think my taste buds became unknowingly sophisticated as I experienced those refined dishes. One of the times when I felt it acutely was when I was actively participating in a foodie club. When I visited a famous restaurant with other members, it was often the case where I didn’t like the food whereas the others liked it. Even though they were people with high standards of taste. I thought then, “If a dish tastes good enough to me, chances are that it’ll be delicious to my customers as well.” So, all the food served at Namyeongdon is food that, first and foremost, I find delicious.

Because “Pretty Pig” was a branch of a chain, I felt that there were limitations in many respects. I wanted it to have a more unique character of its own. So, I decided to change everything from its name to its menu and interior and start anew. Its name, “Namyeongdon” means a “mouth full of delicious pork.”

It was not that it became a restaurant that people lined up to get in right after its opening. People who had been to it kept coming back saying that the food was delicious, but we hadn’t been able to achieve remarkable sales growth. We had difficulty attracting new customers because the district had not been commercially developed. At that time, Amorepacific employees came to the restaurant often, and I still remember it because their frequent visits, always in a group, gave me great strength.

Hip-hop musician Choiza visited the restaurant at a time when I was getting deeply concerned about how to spread word of the restaurant. We didn't know each other at all. Later, I found out that he had visited the restaurant on a recommendation by another musician. Choiza posted a review of the restaurant on his Instagram account, and people started lining up in front of it the very next day. Since word of mouth spread like that, our sales have never dipped. The area's commercial economy has largely been revived as well. To me, Mr. Choiza is no less than a noble savior.

Yes, and because it was a time when customers didn't like meat with a high fat content, restaurants usually cut the fat off pork belly. But I love fat, so much so that I even believe the taste of meat is determined by its fat. And that's why I didn't cut the fat from our pork cheek meat but instead served it together with the meat. Because, as I mentioned before, I had strong confidence that what I thought of as delicious would also strike others as delicious as well. At first, I received complaints about the meat having too much fat. Nevertheless, I stubbornly pushed ahead with it. Which I think naturally led to creating Namyeongdon's signature menu items.

Basically, I put a lot of effort into finding good meat. I procure our meat in different regions in different seasons. The reason is that having the right amount of fat determines the taste of the meat, and depending on the season, the distribution of fat in pork varies. Pigs have a lot of fat when the weather is cold. To ensure the proper amount of fat, we source our meat from warm southern regions in winter and northern regions in summer.

Charcoal is a factor that has a greater effect on the taste of meat than you might think. When I was in civil engineering, the first thing I did was move the felled trees. Most of those trees were sent to be used in charcoal kilns, but the people I worked with often jokingly said, “Meat grilled in these charcoal kilns is really delicious.” I remembered that when I got to use charcoal for the restaurant. I tested the taste of meat by grilling it on various types of charcoal. I tried grilling meat on binchotan charcoal and also on hard charcoal. In the end, the meat grilled over hard charcoal turned out to be the most delicious. I visited loads of charcoal factories in Gangwon-do and Jecheon to find good-quality hard charcoal.

The thing I'm most proud of with my restaurant is that I make all the food put on the tables myself. I make everything myself, from green onion kimchi and white kimchi to salted fish and kimchi stew.

Also, I didn’t know this prior to running a restaurant, but I now know that I'm actually very picky. Because pork cheek or jowl meat has a lot of fat, even storing it for a little longer than normal makes it gamey, and I threw away any meat that was even just a little bit gamey. In fact, I could have let it slip, saying to myself, ‘This extent of gaminess is still alright.’ However, I felt ashamed of even the idea of serving such meat. In the case of kimchi stew, I boil it for about 5 to 6 hours every day, but if you boil it wrong, it can stick to the pot and cause it to burn. When that happens, I throw all of it away. It's food lost, but I believe if I started to compromise on such things little by little, the business wouldn’t be viable in the long run. My philosophy is “Let's do business without embarrassing myself.”

Normally, there is naengmyeon on the menu of a meat restaurant, but most restaurants use ready-made noodles and seasonings. However, because my father made naengmyeon himself, I couldn't even think of buying naengmyeon from somewhere for use at my restaurant. I thought it would be better not to put naengmyeon on the menu at all than to have to buy it. I contemplated what to use instead of naengmyeon, and jjolmyeon was the menu item I eventually came up with because it goes surprisingly well with meat. Just as there are mul-naengmyeon and bibim-naengmyeon when it comes to naengmyeon, I developed mul-jjolmyeon. There are various types of noodles used for jjolmyeon, such as thin noodles and thick noodles. However, because my restaurant uses grills, the flavor of the meat is relatively stronger than other places. I thought it would be better to use thick, textured noodles that can neutralize the strong flavor. Thankfully, the response was good.

The easiest tip of all is not to let your hands rest. In the case of grilling meat over strong, direct heat, you need to turn the meat over 40 to 50 times. There are many people who sear (* to cook meat hot and fast to brown the surface) pork like when they cook beef but using such a technique for pork results in the hardening of the meat surface. With pork, you need to turn the meat very often to seal the juices in.

I've opened three or so more stores. Together with chef Oh Jun-tak, I opened a wood-fired whole chicken restaurant called “Namyeongtak,” and I also run a one-table dining restaurant that serves a different menu each season. I'm currently preparing to open a few more. The reason why I keep opening restaurants as I do is to provide opportunities for those who work at Namyeongdon. Working with those young people made me think about their future together. I want to establish a structure of circulation whereby the current employees at Namyeongdon can strike out on their own by moving to newly opened restaurants and new recruits then come to work at Namyeongdon and learn the ropes. I’m always thinking about how to create opportunities for those young people I work with.

The most difficult time for me was when I was recovering lost sales at Pretty Pig when I was running it with my mother. Now, the district’s commercial economy has largely been revived, but initially, it wasn’t an area with a lot of foot traffic. There were even some weekends when we achieved zero sales. The situation was difficult for us for about 4-5 years, but we persevered because I had the belief that “If I do my own thing, I will eventually succeed.” I got a lot of ideas from going around to restaurants at that time, and a lot of the things I learned then were later reflected in the running of Namyeongdon.

These days, I feel my family's happiness is my happiness. Even when I worry about this and that, as soon as I see my wife happy, those worries disappear. With me being such a picky person, the chefs changed often in the beginning. At the time, after much contemplation, I asked my wife to take care of the kitchen. My wife is a person who understands me better than anyone else. Probably because we’ve built more trust working together, now we are even closer than when we were newlyweds. Even now, I think that 80% of the reason for the restaurant’s success is attributable to my wife.

Sales are important, of course, but I had bigger ambitions when I was first creating Namyeongdon. My ambitions were so big, even though the business wasn't doing well (laughs). I always thought, ‘Someday I want to get my restaurant a Michelin star.’ I think I was able to work even harder because of that goal.

10 years from now, I plan to hand over the restaurant to my son and move to the suburbs with my wife. I want to build a guest room in my house like a restaurant and invite friends over. I'm picturing a future where I serve seasonal food every week and eat it together with my friends there.

Owner Jeong Jae-beom says he wants to pass down the restaurant, which he inherited from his father, to his own son. We hope that based on his stubborn, long-held philosophy about food, Namyeongdon will remain as a mainstay of Yongsan for a long time.