Monmon, Seongsu: monjayaki with a Seoul Forest view
I go to Tokyo often, and there are a few things I always eat there. Monjayaki is one of them: a runny Tokyo-style batter with cabbage and toppings that you cook on a griddle and scrape up in small, crispy bits. There is a whole street of monja restaurants in Tsukishima, which tells you how much Tokyo people love it, and I never expected to find it in Seoul. Okonomiyaki, maybe. Mazesoba, ramen and tsukemen have all arrived as brands. Monja never did.
Then I heard that Moheji, a Tokyo monja chain, was opening in Jongno 3-ga. I went on the second day. The queue number was in the 180s. I waited an hour and a half in a nearby cafe and it was still in the 150s. I gave up. Later that night they messaged to say a table was ready at 11:30pm, and I was glad I had not waited for it.
The problem was that monja was now firmly in my head. I searched for anywhere in Seoul that made it and found Monmon, short for monja monster, with branches in Yeonnam and Seongsu. I put my name in the Catchtable remote queue, drove from Jongno to Seongsu, and arrived just as my number came up. If I had missed it I would have been back at the end of the line.
Before you go
| Item | Notes |
|---|---|
| Queue | Catchtable remote queue. Join it before you set off, so your arrival and your turn line up. A weekend evening took me about 25 to 30 minutes from joining to sitting |
| Ordering | QR code at the table. Limited items like the truffle monja are capped: 20 on weekdays, 30 at weekends when we went |
| Getting there | Walkable from Ttukseom station. If driving, the Bluestone Tower basement near Tamburins: a holiday pass was about ₩9,000, then five minutes on foot |
| Korean name | 몬몬 몬자야끼 성수점 |
A Tokyo alley, with the wrong view
The shop is in the back streets of Seongsu where new places keep opening, and the facade looks like an alley izakaya in Tokyo. Open the door and the feeling gets stronger: loud tables, J-pop on the speakers, bright lights that push the energy up. Monja is a dish you eat while everyone talks over each other, so the noise fits. There are counter seats too, which I had not expected to see at a monja place in Seoul.
Half the value of the room is the window. From our table we looked straight at Seoul Forest and the Acro Seoul Forest towers. A Tokyo izakaya inside, a green Seoul view outside. Window seats are a matter of luck more than queue position. Ours happened to be empty when we arrived and a staff member let us take it.
The menu includes a step-by-step guide to eating monjayaki, with pictures. I have eaten it several times and still was not sure I was doing it right. Reading the guide, I learned I had been doing it wrong. If it is your first time, this is the kind of place to learn.
On the table: buldak hot sauce, shichimi, pepper and Tabasco. Buldak sauce at a monja table looked odd to me until I tried it on the monja, and it worked. I tried all four. None of them was a mistake.
Two monja, one lesson
We ordered the mentaiko mochi monja, the new truffle monja, shio-kombu fries and a zero cola. I had meant to get the kimchi pork, but a sign for the limited truffle version changed my mind. Limited quantities get me every time.
A staff member comes to the table and cooks the monja in front of you, the way they do in Tokyo: the order of frying, when to shape the ring, when to pour in the liquid. Watching it once and you understand the dish. It does not look like much. That is monja. When it browns and sticks to the griddle like scorched rice, you scrape it up with the little spatula and eat it that way, and that is the correct method.
The mentaiko mochi monja leads with the salty depth of cod roe, and the chewy mochi keeps pushing from behind. On top of a proper monja base, those two make the whole thing sing. If it is your first monja, start here.
The shio-kombu fries were better than they had any right to be: fries dusted with kelp salt, a faint butter note, clean and savory. One side dish between two monja is exactly right.
When the first monja was nearly gone we ordered the second. Staff cleared and cleaned the griddle completely before setting up again. The QR menu even tells you to order the second one when the first is almost finished, so you do not have to remember. The truffle version arrives with the aroma sitting on top, strong at first, then folding into the sauce as you chew. It was fun, but as a second monja after the mentaiko it tipped into richness and we left a little. If you are two people, one monja and a yakisoba set is the better order, or at least put the rich one first.
Through the window the lights around Seoul Forest came on one by one and the towers sharpened. From the window seat, the view alone justified the drive.
The room was couples in their twenties, groups of friends in their thirties, a family with a stroller, a couple like us on a date, and one person eating alone at the counter. Everyone talking in their own corner, the whole place lively. Aprons are provided because monja spatters. The owner looked stern and quiet, the way the best chefs on Culinary Class Wars look, and read the whole room without seeming to. On the way out there is ice cream by the door, which was the only dessert we needed.
Walking out, I checked the Moheji queue. Number 82, at eight in the evening, three hours after joining. If I had stayed in Jongno I would have eaten at half past eleven. Going to Seongsu was the right call, and I did not think about Moheji once while I was eating. I will get to Moheji eventually. For now, Monmon is the practical choice, the food is excellent, and it has a view the Jongno branch will never have.
I’d recommend it to anyone who ate monja in Tokyo and wants it back, to people who cannot face the Moheji queue, to couples who want Seongsu with a Seoul Forest view, and to anyone who wants a loud Japanese-izakaya kind of dinner. Next time I will skip the truffle, order the kimchi pork with a yakisoba set, and bring a friend from abroad, because a dish you cook together at the table is a good way to introduce someone to it.
My rating: 4.5/5.