She Was Pretty|Yeonghwaru — The First Date in a Two-Storey Chinese House

The first date is not a rooftop bar. It is a low Chinese restaurant in a Seochon alley that has been plating jjajangmyeon for two generations.

Visit Seoul names Yeonghwaru, at 65 Jahamun-ro 7-gil, as the restaurant where Hye-jin and Sung-joon sit down after the office has already tangled them. The building is an old red-brick house, not a set. The phone number on the door is still 02-738-1218. The house specialty is gochu ganjjajang, black-bean noodles cut with Cheongyang pepper, and the kitchen still closes when the batter runs out.

In the drama the table is small and the talk is larger than either of them planned. Outside, Jahamun-ro 7-gil is the kind of lane you miss if you stay on the palace side of Gyeongbokgung Station. The restaurant does not put a drama plaque in the window. It does not need one. You order the same noodles, you hear the same extractor fan, and the alley beyond the glass is the one they walked when the meal was over.

Come for lunch if you can. The rooms fill early. The drama used the building because it already looked like a life, not a location.