Ellen Lindner: Art & Creativity

Gwang-jang Market was different from anything we’d ever experienced.  It’s huge, with a wide variety of tiny shops, food stalls, and lots of people.  (No Westerners, though.)

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We arrived around 6 PM, so the only vendors still open were the food stalls.  There were tons of them, each offering a few specific foods.  Seafood, beef, potato pancakes, fresh vegetables, noodles, etc.  Each stall had a bench for customers, so that diners sat about a foot from where their food was prepared.

After walking the full length and trying to decode the various offerings, we decided that dumplings would be a safe choice.  (My son, Andrew, has quite a good understanding of Korean language and culture, but his parents were much more leery.)  The head lady at the noodle stall lured us in and offered us a prime spot immediately in front of  her work station.  We ordered noodle and dumpling soup and watched the three women cook it for us.

Side item:  our son is quite a novelty, and therefore a focus of interest, everywhere we go.  People are shocked when he speaks Korean, and repeatedly ask how he learned it, why we’re here, etc.  He loves the attention and explains about wanting to teach here.  This always launches interesting conversations with him joking in Korean, etc.  He’s charming everyone.

While we watched our dinner being prepared, Andrew entertained the cooks and the other patrons, and vice versa.  The head cook was amazing with those noodles!  She measured, rolled, and cut the fresh dough without even looking.  When I asked if I could take her photo, she cracked up!

And then posed for a “proper” photo.

Her assistants were working the other end of the stall, but they kept visiting our end to see what the entertaining foreigners were up to.

The soup:  not bad, (although everything is under salted to our American palettes. ) We also tried an item that is basically a giant potato pancake, with other vegetables included.  It’s cooked while you wait and then you walk and try to eat the smoking hot thing. That proved tricky, so we enjoyed ours by  the Cheonggyecheon stream.  (A picturesque sunken stream with walking paths.)

Enjoying the adventure!
Ellen Lindner