Chef Lim Seong-geun's New Restaurant Sold Out Lunch in 75 Minutes

Soft opens don't usually go like this. Chef Lim Seong-geun's new restaurant in Paju — built around two signatures, kimchi jjageuli and bakpo galbi — sold out its entire lunch service on opening day before 12:15 PM, despite doors opening at 11. The queue wasn't a fluke: this is a chef who won the Korean cooking competition Han-sik Daecheop in 2015 and spent the past year quietly stepping back from all broadcast and advertising work to focus entirely on getting this place right.

The building itself is three floors with a clear purpose on each level. The ground floor is dedicated to kimchi jjageuli jjigae — the braised kimchi stew that became one of his most-watched recipes on YouTube. The second floor serves the bakpo galbi, a short-rib dish that reportedly stopped the judges mid-bite during a major cooking competition last year. The third floor is a café. It's a full afternoon if you want to work through all three.

The jjageuli is the one to start with. An Instagram food account that visited on soft-open day described it as deeply savory kimchi stew with generous portions of meat, and noted that steamed rice, a fried egg, and noodle add-ins are unlimited — the stew itself is priced at 14,000 won per person. The portion size got called out specifically as being larger than expected, which tracks for a chef who built his reputation on bold, unfussy Korean home cooking.

Paju is not a quick subway hop from central Seoul — the restaurant sits near Simhaksan mountain in Paju-si, Gyeonggi Province, so factor in travel time if you're coming from the city. That said, the crowd on soft-open day suggests people are already making the trip without hesitation. Official regular hours begin from July 9, 2025, so the chaos of the first few days should settle into something more predictable — though arriving well before 11 AM is probably still the move.

The bakpo galbi on the second floor is the other reason to make the journey. It's the dish that put Lim Seong-geun back on the national radar last year, and having it available as a sit-down restaurant menu item rather than a competition plate is a different thing entirely. If you're visiting Korea and want one meal that connects directly to a real moment in Korean food culture right now, this is a strong candidate — just don't show up at 11:30 and expect to get a table.