Busan cuisine has class, from unique seafood to sweet street food

Features

Published: 06 Apr. 2023, 06:01 Updated: 06 Apr. 2023, 16:27

Busan cuisine has class, from unique seafood to sweet street food

Busan's Jagalchi Fish Market sells fresh fish and also has an array of restaurants that sell hoe (raw fish), gomjangeo (inshore hagfish) and other seafood. [YONHAP]

BUSAN — “Ajimae! Can we add a serving of gomjangeo [inshore hagfish] here please,” a young man in his 30s yells at street vendor No. 8, called Kimhaejip, at the Jagalchi Market in Busan’s Nampo-dong with his wife on a recent Friday night.

“You just wait until the customers leave, I’ll have a drink with you,” the ajimae responded, who looked to be in her 70s and the likely owner of the street restaurant No. 8. Ajimae is the regional way of saying ajumma (an affectionate term for middle-aged women in Korean) in the Busan dialect.

At around 10 p.m., when most of her customers had left, she sat down with her frequenter who ordered one more serving of gomjangeo, shared a glass or two of soju, and wrapped up her day.

Ajimae at No. 8 Gimhaejip is busy preparing gomjangeo (inshore hagfish) for her customers. [YIM SEUNG-HYE]

“This is quite a typical scene of how I wrap up my Friday night,” she said as she toasted her soju glass with her customer, surnamed Kang. “I know he orders an extra serving just for me. This is Busan style — the affection we have for each other, I guess, though we are just an ajimae and a customer.”

But Kang says he only does that because his ajimae often treats him and other customers to a plateful of hot and crispy jeon, otherwise known as a Korean fritter, when she’s not so busy.

“She always shouts out ‘on the house,’ so coolly and tosses a plate on our table,” Kang said. “We just love her dearly, and we know she cares for us.”

This warm and dynamic energy of the port city and its residents translates directly into its cuisine. Busan’s food scene is heavily influenced by the time when it was a wartime capital and temporary sanctuary for the refugees of the 1950-53 Korean War, as well as more modern, outside influences, typical of port cities.

Visitors to the Busan International Food Expo 2023 take a look around different booths on March 9 at the Bexco in Busan's Haeundae District. The event has been organized to offer a variety of tasty treats from around the world available in Busan. [YONHAP]

It is also a burgeoning gourmet city with fine dining venues that incorporate the finest ingredients that Busan has to offer.

"There's no doubt that we can source the finest seafood from right outside the door for all our restaurants at Park Hyatt Busan," said Vincenzo Carbone, the executive chef at Park Hyatt Busan. "The hotel is focused on sustainability in that we want to support the local community in any way we can."

Carbone is from Napoli in Italy, but has worked in China for about 20 years and also in Japan, having already experienced two World Expos held in Korea's neighboring countries.

Carbone says this port city is like a blue ocean — that there are so many new opportunities for its people if it wins the bid to host the upcoming World Expo 2030.

Vincenzo Carbone, executive chef at Park Hyatt Busan, creates one of his signature dishes on April 1. [YIM SEUNG-HYE]

"In terms of the cuisine, there's so much variety here in Busan," he said. "I love the street food in the traditional markets; you have amazing fish markets here. As for the fine dining scene, I can see that it's growing. When Koreans plan to do something, they do it fast and they do it right. So I am very positive about the Expo and I root for you guys."

Korean chef Edward Kwon, who runs multiple fine dining restaurants across the country including Busan's Lab24, which was listed on La Liste's 2023 rankings, also believes the fine dining scene in Busan is "absolutely a blue ocean." La Liste is a selective gourmet guide for restaurants and pastry shops around the world.

"Seoul's restaurant scene is already a red ocean, so there's so much opportunity here, where sourcing fresh seafood and great meat is easier," said Kwon.

But the fine dining experience isn’t limited to fancy hotels and restaurants in Busan. Around town are rustic omakase places, or rather imokase, because Korean imo, or female servers, instead of chefs choose what they want to serve the customers. Imo literally means aunt in Korean, but locals also use the term to refer to servers at eateries serving Korean food.

The most iconic imokase experience unique to Busan is at casual gopchang (grilled cow intestines) eateries. Many of these places are designed to look like humble omakase restaurants with a bar table and a grill in front of every few seats and an imo behind it to cook the intestines.

Put in an order of intestines (around 40,000 won or $31) — often the only thing on the menu — and the imo brings out scores of side dishes, called banchan in Korean, and sauces, and on the grill skillfully cooks various parts of a bovine, including the heart, small intestines, large intestines and stomach.

Gopchang places can seem a bit daunting, especially for those who haven’t tried intestines before. But not to worry, because imo’s got you covered.

These ladies not only cook the meat to perfection but also craft a perfect bite with various combinations of sauces and side dishes. And each imo puts her own creative twist on the meat. Some opt for elaborate toppings such as chives, green onion kimchi and garlic shoots, while others roll kimchi around the meat with some spicy peppers.

Another rather quirky yet delicious dish to try in Busan is gomjangeo, which is an eel-like fish that doesn’t have a jaw.

Gomjangeo is being cooked on a grill with a heap of straw at a gomjangeo eatery in Busan [JOONGANG ILBO]

One of the local ways to enjoy gomjangeo is to wrap it in some lettuce [JOONGANG ILBO]

There isn’t a large market for hagfish in the rest of the world, and it is often an acquired taste, even for Korean locals, if only because of how it looks. Grilled hagfish, with prices starting at around 40,000 won, either marinated or salted, are chopped into small pieces and cooked at the table. Since the nerves are still intact, the cut-up hagfish moves, quite decidedly, while it is being cooked, which can be off-putting to many. But once ready to be eaten, they have a delicious, soft yet chewy texture and are said to provide stamina.

One famous location for some fresh grilled hagfish is the Jagalchi Market, the biggest seafood market in Korea. Officially founded in 1970, the fish market was kickstarted by locals who arrived in Busan from Japan after Korea’s independence in 1945 and grew further in number with the thousands of refugees who took shelter in Busan during the Korean War, according to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Among the many fish that these merchants sold were hagfish. Hagfish at the time were cheap, only deemed useful for their slimy skin, with the meat often being thrown away. Many poor merchants, often females whose husbands were away at war, took these fish, grilled them, and started selling them around the Jagalchi Market.

For something other than seafood, the Bupyeong Kkangtong Market offers every Korean street food imaginable. Its name, which translates to “can market,” is derived from the fact that the market used to sell a lot of American-made canned goods during its heyday in the 1980s.

Of the endless street food varieties, a must-try Busan specialty is eomuk, otherwise known as fish cakes.

Eomuk, or fish cake, on skewers is a staple Busan street food [JOONGANG ILBO]

A total of 45 eomuk producers of some 100 across all of Korea are located in Busan, according to the Busan government. The city is home to the country’s first eomuk company, owned by the Japanese because it was established during the Japanese colonial era.

Eomuk is essentially fish that has been ground, seasoned, mixed with flour and then fried. Fish cakes inside street carts are sold on skewers (4,000 won for four) and boiled in a seafood and vegetable broth. Cheap eomuk uses less fish, but Busan-made eomuk is at least 70 percent fish, according to the Academy of Korean Studies.

Busan also has given the originally-Japanese food its tasty twist.

Catering to the region’s palate that prefers strong flavors, many vendors also sell red fish cakes, which are made very spicy with gochugaru (red pepper flakes) and gochujang. Also next to the fish cakes are multteok, which are long, cylindrical tteok (rice cakes) on skewers that have been boiling in the fish cake broth for hours. They may appear dull and bland at first glance, but one bite into the warm, pillowy tteok will show that they are packed with umami deliciousness.

Hotteok, which is Korean fried bread with melted brown sugar, is being fried at a street cart in Busan [JOONGANG ILBO]

Ssiat, or seed, hotteok Is a Busan specialty [JOONGANG ILBO]

For something sweeter, Busan is also famous for its ssiat, or seed, hotteok, which goes for around 2,000 won. Hotteok is pancake-shaped fried bread with a pocket filled with melted brown sugar and sometimes honey as well, common on any street in Korea; but Busan street carts stuff these fried thick pockets of bread with various nuts, sunflower seeds, raisins, crushed peanuts and almond slices, in addition to the melted brown sugar.

“Though I work at a five-star hotel, if my family were to visit the city, I would definitely make them try the ssiat hotteok for sure,” Carbone said. “Busan's food scene has so much to offer — from casual to high-end — and they are both a great charm of the city."

BY YIM SEUNG-HYE, LEE JIAN [yim.seunghye@joongang.co.kr]