Stuffed with chicken, we moved from the food portion of Dongdaemun Market to the textile area. According to Life In Korea, Dongdaemun has "26 shopping malls, 30,000 specialty shops, and 50,000 manufacturers." Outside, fleets of manned scooters wait to ship deliveries around the city. Want a blanket? We've got 'em all!!!
Bibs are available to minimize the danger of splatters. The portions are cut to your specifications. I need me a pair of these sheers. They're like the Jaws of Life!
Our Spicy Death Stew, full of da dae gi and kimchi. The chicken is mostly eaten. Bones are deposited in another large metal bowl. It's a two-handed meal, chopsticks in one hand and chunks of chicken in the other.
The knife cut noodles were really good. A nice flavor, chewy yet soft texture, fairly uniform thickness but tapers off where the dough ended.
There are some wrinkles in the ordering scheme. The kimchee and potatoes are free. You can order extras like duk, the kal guk soo (knife cut noodles), and other items separately. The servers may ask you if you want these items but don't tell you they're extra, though this policy is written on the menu. Just bring a wad of won and it'll be fine. The chicken is about $13 USD, extras are are few dollars apiece.
You get a steel bowl with a chicken and some vegetables (onions, potatoes). You bring it to a boil over your gas burner, cut up the chicken with some industrial strength shears, and then eat it with a mix-it-yourself sauce. Read on.
We thought the dish would be bland so we put in a very generous scoop of da dae gi (seasoned red pepper) to spice it up. When the stew came to a boil we were given a bowl of kimchi to go into the stew. Oops. We think these bowls are refilled and reused, but don't think about it too much.
The do-it-yourself sauce of of da dae gi, wasabi, vinegar, and soy. Everything except the da dae gi skews sweet.
Dak han mal e kal guk soo, or "one chicken and knife cut noodles." I'm told it's also the name of the restaurant, though I don't recall seeing a sign. It's "the place where you look in the window and it's full of people eating chicken." You'll know this is the space even if you've never seen it before.
The interior is utilitarian. The menu hangs from the ceiling and the prices are written in Chinese characters. Bottles of soju near the cashier and bowls of duk (rice cakes) in the foreground.
The table setting. Steel canisters hold metal spoons and chopsticks, and a single burner connected to a gas line. Metal chopsticks, by the way, are very common in restaurants. Bamboo chopsticks are rare. We placed our order waited with baited breath.
At the center of this image is a woman delivering lunch somewhere within the market.
"Oh wow, rack of lamb!"
"That's not lamb."
"What is it?"
"That's dog."
Man, it looked good. The rack of dog ribs was cooling out on the counter. We were in the section of the market that specialized in dog meat, once more widespread but covered up by the Korean government when it hosted the World Cup. I wanted to try some, but we hadn't finished scoping out the market. I waved a sad goodbye and vowed to return later.
In the end, I was drunk after lunch and we had to hoof it to the airport, so these will have to wait for another trip.
It's old, loud, crowded, and a little bit dirty, but not exactly in a bad way. This would never fly in the US, and that's a real shame. The smell of grilling fish draws us in. We debate over our lunch options.
Dongdaemun market opened in 1905, but looking around you get the sense that this market has been here for much longer than that. I wonder if any of my family climbed up these steps long ago.
The market is quite large, comprising out two main halves. The food market has indoor and outdoor sections. This is a cluster of restaurants that specialize in gop chang, or casserole dishes. To the left are bags of clothes. A tailor has set up shop across several tables behind us.
We were in a quiet corner of Busan and even these smaller streets were packed with shops and bright signs. Somewhere in there, surely, must be a throng of guys playing StarCraft. This looks a bit like Manhattan's 32nd St K-town, doesn't it?
The second floor of the market holds dry goods vendors and restaurants. The rest of our breakfast. Including the fish in the previous entry and a sea eel not shown, our total for seafood would be approximately $25. Clockwise from 12 o'clock: libve abalone, sea cucumber, stuff in shells we can't identify, more stuff in shells we can't identify, a live octopus, and more live abalone.
Here's all the seafood from the first shot, ready to eat. You can't really tell here but the octopus is still moving. And, good grief, they left the eyes in.
The orange-red shell creature was prepared by lopping off the top with a knife and scooping out the inside with one's hands. It tasted a bit like a cross between mirugai (giant clam) and scallop.
We tried to get the sea eel prepared as sashimi. Unfortunately, we were misunderstood and it was added to a seafood stew along with our other fiesty fish. However, it all worked out in the end. The eel was exceptionally tender when cooked. Not at all like the hard, unremarkable anago you get in most New York sushi restaurants. The flavor is delicate, and the texture is almost fluffy.
The sea cucumber was fresh and delicious, though I think I preferred the cured version at Moto.
The octopus was extremely tender and was eating with a mixture of sesame oil and salt. Yes, the skin and muscles are still moving. Yes, the suction cups stick to your tongue and the inside of your mouth. Quite a sensation.
Abalone. Firm, not excessively chewey. Tastes of the sea.
An overhead view of our entire meal. The bowl of red soup and tofu in the middle right is our seafood stew. Our drink was home brewed barley tea in a 2 liter water bottle, served into small steel bowls. It felt very old school, like something my parents would do. The ban chan, miyuk guk (kelp soup), grilled grilled fish, and rice come as part of the meal, all for approximately $10.
There's a good chance part of your meal was cooked over this. Gritty charm and dock workers at no additional cost.
The Busan Cooperative Fish Market, like the old Fulton Fish Market (and as we would later find out, Tsukiji) is in an aging, crowded building. The market's future modernized home is under construction next door. Vendors call out to you as you walk by each stall, pointing out what's particularly good that day and offering you a better price than the next guy.
Scattered along the streets surrounding the market are small restaurants prominently displaying tanks of live seafood. The proprietors come out as you walk by, offering you a table and explaining how good their seafood is. Between the restaurants are other market vendors, presumably crowded out of the central market or unable to pay its fees. It's a chilly grey morning and some have built wood fires to stay warm.
Every time I see blowfish I think of Homer Simpson yelling, "Fugu me!" Some fresh fugu is available, but most of it imported frozen from China, like these shown here. We would later find out that it is not fugu season.
They offer hearty stews and porridges for the local workers but they will also cook up your your market purchases. Here, our fishmonger is bagging a particularly fiesty fish that would later break through two plastic bags, be chased down several steps, stab my hands with its fins, and damage my camera. A dutch oven would have been more a appropriate storage container. For a moment I considered setting it free.
