The Okryu Restaurant, a Korean-style majestic building standing on the shore of the Taedong River meandering through the capital city of Pyongyang, is always crowded with people.

The name of the restaurant reminds the Koreans first of the famous Pyongyang cold noodles, one of the four specialities of Pyongyang.

In other words, the Pyongyang cold noodles represent the restaurant and are the most typical food of the Korean nation.

Tens of millions of people have tasted the noodles in the eatery since its inauguration in 1960.

The Koreans like cold noodles so much that it became their dietary habit to have them as a meal every day. Especially, the demand for them is very high in scorching summer among four seasons.

The food is famous since every component of it is distinctive, such as the chewy strips of the noodles, mellow meat stock, garnishes of harmonious taste and brass vessels enhancing the quality of the dish.

The meat stock is very important in the noodles. In order to make it beef, pork and chicken are boiled slowly in cold water while scooping foam and fat, soy sauce and salt are added and the stock is brought to the boil again before it is filtered with a sieve and cooled. The meat stock is mixed with watery radish kimchi juice and the mixture is clear, refreshing and savoury.

Not content with only one vessel of the noodles, many diners have two unashamedly, saying that they have an additional stomach for noodles.

The noodles in a flat vessel covered with meat are also a popular dish of the Okryu Restaurant.

The dish is mainly made of buckwheat noodles and chicken and can be claimed to be the best food in nutritive value and flavour and in relieving midsummer heat.

Everyone at the table beams—the diners mixing the appetizing chicken on the flat vessel with spices and the waitresses pouring fragrant meat stock on the coiled noodles.

The restaurant is also visited by many overseas Koreans and foreigners.

Overseas Koreans who tasted the Pyongyang cold noodles say that visitors to Pyongyang will feel regret all their lives if they fail to have the Pyongyang cold noodles, while foreign visitors who took a liking to the noodles say they look for the Korean dish back home, adding they never forget the Korean word “kuksu(noodles)”.

The Delicacy House of the Okryu Restaurant serves rare foods made of terrapin and sturgeon.

Diners contentedly take the special dishes and some families, working people from the same workshop and others spend a good time relishing sinsollo and yakpap, traditional Korean foods full of national flavour.

Sixty-five years have passed since the Okryu Restaurant opened and it is loved by people as a popular public catering facility which brings happy smile and national flavour to visitors.