“We visited Gwangjang Market in one of Seoul's oldest neighborhoods, squeezing past crowds of people threading through its covered alleys, a natural maze spontaneously joined and splintered over a century of accretion. We passed busy ajummas in aprons and rubber kitchen gloves tossing knife-cut noodles in colossal, bubbling pots for kalguksu, grabbing fistfuls of colorful namul from overbrimming bowls for bibimbap, standing over gurgling pools of hot oil, armed with metal spatulas in either hand, flipping the crispy sides of stone-milled soybean pancakes. Metal containers full of jeotgal, salt-fermented seafood banchan, affectionally known as rice thieves, because their intense, salty flavor cries out for starchy, neutral balance; raw, pregnant crabs, floating belly up in soy sauce to show off the unctuous roe protruding out from beneath their shells; millions of minuscule peach-colored krill used for making kimchi or finishing hot soup with rice; and my family's favorite, crimson sacks of pollack roe smothered in gochugaru, myeongnanjeot.” SeafoodSoy SauceSeoulKorean CuisineKimchiFermented FoodsFood Market Book:Crying in H Mart Source: Crying in H Mart
“On our final night in Seoul, Nami and Emo Boo took us to Samwon Garden, a fancy barbecue spot in Apgujeong, a neighborhood my mom once described as the Beverly Hills of Seoul. We entered through the beautiful courtyard garden, its two man-made waterfalls flowing under rustic stone bridges and feeding the koi pond. Inside the dining room were heavy stone-top tables, each equipped with a hardwood charcoal grill. Nami slipped the waitress twenty thousand won, and our table quickly filled with the most exquisite banchan. Sweet pumpkin salad, gelatinous mung-bean jelly topped with sesame seeds and scallions, steamed egg custard, delicate bowls of nabak kimchi, wilted cabbage and radish in salty, rose-colored water. We finished the meal with naengmyeon, cold noodles you could order bibim, mixed with gochujang, or mul, served in a cold beef broth.” RestaurantSide DishSeoulKorean Cuisine Book:Crying in H Mart Source: Crying in H Mart
“Noryangjin is a wholesale market where you can choose live fish and seafood from the tanks of different vendors and have them sent up to be prepared in a number of cooking styles at restaurants upstairs. My mother and I were with her two sisters, Nami and Eunmi, and they had picked out pounds of abalone, scallops, sea cucumber, amberjack, octopus, and king crab to eat raw and boiled in spicy soups. Upstairs, our table filled immediately with banchan dotting around the butane burner for our stew. The first dish to arrive was sannakji---live long-armed octopus. A plate full of gray-and-white tentacles wriggled before me, freshly severed from their head, every suction cup still pulsing.” SeafoodOctopusRaw FoodSeoul Book:Crying in H Mart Source: Crying in H Mart