On my last full day in Seoul (don’t worry, more food coming, as we’re moving backwards and forwards in time here), we stopped into a Chinese noodle place in Bukchon after a meeting. I think Sojung had a heavy-duty hankering for jajangmyeon.
Jajangmyeon consists of white noodles served with a black soybean paste, mixed in with sliced green onions, with danmuji (takuan) on the side. A big show is always made of mixing it up, which I think must be half the fun of eating it.. When I first encountered this dish earlier in the week, Sojung described it as “popular kids food, like macaroni and cheese in America”. It definitely is easy to eat, and super sweet fun. It’s the favourite food of Korean Hello Kitty rival Pucca, who lives above a noodle shop owned by her parents. Sojung is definitely having a good time mixing up her jajangmyeon up there.
I had eaten jajangmyeon at a dinner earlier in the week, and since spicy ramen is my yen, I hit up the seafood ramen. I think pretty much any soup with noodles gets called ramen (at least to gringos) over here, because this was a different ramen than anything I had before, heavy on the vegetables, with egg-based noodles, very chewy, very Chinese. Not so oily, but definitely hit the spice spot. Lots of octopus and shrimp floating around in there, along with something “crawfish-like, but foreign shaped” that I never quite identified.
Delicious dumplings. Tiny, delicate steamed dumplings, like gyoza but way, way lighter. I ate a ton of these. A ton. A little bit of pork inside, but mainly vegetable. I normally don’t think of dumplings as refreshing, but every time I encountered them in Seoul, they were way, way less filling than I expected.
Banchan. Danmuji for the jajangmyeon, a little black bean paste that no one used, soy with chili for the dumplings and my cup of tea.
