Why We Never Opened a Second Restaurant — There Is Only This One

Lately more and more people walk in and ask the same thing.

“This is the right place, isn’t it?”

I say yes, and most of them look relieved. Every so often someone adds that they saw a similar sign somewhere else.

So it seemed worth writing this down once, properly.

There is one of us

Sokcho Hangari Mulhoe operates from a single address: 11 Haeoreum-ro 188beon-gil, right in front of Sokcho Beach.

• We do not franchise.
• There is no second location and no branch.
• We do not supply our broth or seasoning to any other restaurant.

The obvious question is why. That is what this piece is about.

The broth cannot be handed over

Mulhoe is mostly broth.

Ours — sweet-sour with a clean finish — took a long time to arrive at. It is not a taste you land on in a season.

Open a second restaurant and that broth has to be handed to somebody else, somewhere else. Supplying it to another restaurant amounts to the same thing.

I did not think I could.

The seafood comes from friends who fish

I was born and raised in Sokcho. Many of the people I grew up with — friends, older and younger lads from the same streets — still go out on the boats. When the best of the morning lands at the harbour, ours is the first kitchen they call.

That is why we say if we do not have it, no mulhoe restaurant in Sokcho has it.

But turn that around and it means something else: there is a ceiling on how much we can get. When good fish comes in, we fill the bowl without counting. When it does not, we charge the honest market price, or take the dish off for the day.

Open a second restaurant and the thin days have to be filled from somewhere. From that moment it is not the mulhoe I know.

The pots are part of it

Mulhoe has to be cold or it is not mulhoe.

We have our earthenware pots made thick to order. They hold the chill, so the last spoonful is as cold as the first. Pour in broth with ice crystals still in it, stir in the noodles and rice, and you have the bowl people here grew up on.

We stake a great deal on that vessel. And it is not the kind of thing that scales.

What we do instead

There is one thing we do instead of expanding.

Sokcho is a city built by families who came down from the North. Twice a year we host around 300 elderly residents of Abai Village for a meal. We clear the whole third-floor hall for it.

We have written about Abai Village separately. Once you know what kind of town this is, you will understand a little better why we stay put.

How to be sure — the calligraphy and the seal

The fastest way is simply to look.

Our sign and our pots carry hand-brushed calligraphy and a red seal. That lettering and that seal are registered together as a trademark with the Korean Intellectual Property Office — registration no. 40-1724558 (registered 7 May 2021, Nice class 43, restaurant services).

This lettering and this seal are our mark.

If you would rather check by numbers:

1. Search on Naver Map and see whether the address reads 11 Haeoreum-ro 188beon-gil.
2. Check that the phone number is +82-33-635-4488.
3. Check that the website is mulhoe.co.kr.
4. Look up registration number 40-1724558 on KIPRIS (kipris.or.kr) — the official record shows the mark itself.

We have put all of it on one page.

One last thing

We are not going to talk about other restaurants.

We are writing this for one reason: if you set out to find us, we would like you to actually get here.

We were first on Korean television in 2015, and a few times since. All of it filmed at this address. It was here then and it is here now.

Come and you will see. Go up to the Sky Stairs viewing deck above the third floor: from there the beach and the Sokcho Eye come into a single frame.

See the menu · Find us · The original · +82-33-635-4488