I got into Busan early in the morning after taking a over night ferry from Shimonoseki Japan. After I checked into one of the local cheap hotels my first thought was to find some fresh Korean food. During my first visit to Busan on my way to Japan I literally had to run from the train station to the ferry terminal so I didn’t get much sight seeing done.
This time I planned on spending a few good days at a very minimum getting to know this port city. While wandering the city on foot I stumbled upon a warehouse with it’s doors open allowing anyone walking by to see from one side of the building out to the other side which opened up into an alley. This is a little hard to explain but the picture shows you exactly what I mean. You can actually make out the shapes of some of the customers sitting at the counter.
As mentioned a little earlier I was craving some traditional Korean food and the smell emanating from the alley was enticing. When I noticed that people were walking into the warehouse and simply grabbing a chair at the little counter I made up my mind to go “local”. I simply walked in and grabbed a seat at one of the counters. From their expressions I suspect that they were at first a little surprised to see a lone white guy walk in and just sit down at the counter. They asked me something in Korean which I didn’t understand but I pointed to another customers bowl of noodles and said “I’ll have that” in Korean along with a roll of Kimpap.
The women in the open air kitchen quickly got to work getting my order ready. One got out the hand made fresh pasta and started working it with her hands before chopping it into linguine size pieces. Another took some of the water from a large pot and placed it into a smaller pot over a gas burning stove, turning the heat up as she did so.
As the water came to a boil they threw the fresh pasta noodles into the small pot. In the meantime they prepared a role of Kimpap and cut it into small pieces adding a dab of sesame oil on the top for extra flavor. In the few minutes it took them to get my meal ready I snapped a few shots from around this little warehouse restaurant:
Once in the boiling water it didn’t take more than a few minutes before the noodles were cooked. They threw into the soup some fresh green herbs and dropped it in front of me along with my kimpap and a side dish of spicy pickled radish (kimchi). There was some partially frozen ice tea available on the counters as well as some condiments consisting of freshly chopped onions, garlic and spicy sauce.
Needless to say I grabbed spoon, dropped some of the condiments into the soup and let it all mix together:
In the meantime I started on the kimpap. Kimpap is a roll of rice and seaweed along with a variety of ingredients inside depending on who’s making them. Like the many variations of the sandwich so are the variations on a roll of kimpap. That being said most of them contain a mix and/of: egg, pickled vegetables (often radish), ham, carrot, beef and a fish paste called odeng. The variations are only limited by the imagination I assume. In the picture below I had already eaten over half of the roll given to me.
Kimpap is found almost everywhere in Korea and is a nice, healthy, filling snack. Now that the noodles had been sitting in the broth, onions, garlic and spicy sauce for a good few minutes it was time to turn my attention to them:
The noodles were nice and soft when biting into them yet at the same time had a slightly chewy texture (similar to al dente pasta). Once the spicy sauce and condiments had mixed together with the broth It had a nice warm spiciness. I got up from the table with my belly full and a smile on my face. The meal was by far the best thing going on but a close second was the cost: 4000 won for everything, that’s about 4$ Canadian at the time. I visited this little warehouse restaurant a few more times before I left the city of Busan. On my second visit rather than being surprised the ladies beamed me a large smile as I sat down at the counter.
mtl_dokkaebi
