I’ve fallen a little behind on my goal of getting all my Seoul reports done by the middle of May. Okay, quite a bit behind. I’m going to try to catch up in a hurry though. Here first is a very image-heavy look at one of our favourite market outings in the city in early March, to Mangwon Market. Like Cheongnyangni Market, Mangwon Market is a traditional farmers’ market, which is to say it is a market where locals go to shop—though it’s quite a bit smaller than Cheongnyangni Market. Located in Mapo-gu, it’s more off the tourist map than Gwangjang Market, Namdaemun Market and Tongin Market—or Noryangjin Fish Market, for that matter. It’s a covered market and once you’re in it, the alleys are lined with cooked food vendors of various kinds. We visited on a Saturday morning and had a very nice time walking slowly through the crowded market, stopping to eat snacks along the way. We also bought some prepared foods to take away with us for dinner and some fresh seafood to cook in the upcoming week. And then as we were leaving the market we couldn’t resist stopping at a small restaurant for some noodle soup and mandu. Here is a look at it all.

The market is located a few minutes walk from the Mangwon subway station (Line 6) and is easy enough to get to from wherever you might be based in Seoul. The street approaching the market is itself lined with shops and restaurants but the market proper is covered and has a discrete entrance. As you enter and walk around you’ll see that the organization is quite haphazard. That is to say, the market is not divided into sections. Instead everything is more or less alongside everything else: fresh and dried seafood vendors and butchers jostle with vegetable and dried goods sellers, yes, but also with stores selling socks and hats and cosmetics.

And everywhere there are food vendors. There are some more formal sit-down restaurants—some of them quite popular, seemingly, judging by the lines—but we gave all our attention to the more casual vendors. Among the things we ate as we walked: eomuk/steamed fish cakes, deep-fried soondae, fried chicken (various flavours), deep-fried large shrimp, deep-fried tiny crab, marinated frog in shiso leaf, and Korean-style corn dogs. We also sampled and bought some excellent jokbal and chilli-marinated crab which we took home for dinner. My friend Paromita bought a large bag of schisandra/five-flavour berry, and on the way out I bought some more fresh oysters and some shrimp from the vendor at the entrance. There was much else we were tempted to buy but at this point we had only about 10 days left in Seoul and so we had to control our impulses. Everything, it goes without saying, was priced extremely reasonably.

Though we’d eaten quite a bit while walking through the market, we stopped on the way to the subway station at a small restaurant, Jangmonim Myeolchi Guksu for some of their myeolchi guksu (noodles in an anchovy-based broth). I don’t know whose jangmonim (mother-in-law) was doing the cooking but it was a great bowl of noodle soup, and the plate of steamed mandu we got alongside had some of the best dumplings we ate on the whole trip.

Anyway, here is a walk-through the market—following the haphazard layout—and then a look at Jangmonim Myeolchi Guksu. Scroll down to see what’s coming next from Korea and the Twin Cities.

My next report from South Korea will actually be not from Seoul but Busan. That’ll go up tomorrow. And if I can find time I might try to put up one more Seoul report on Sunday. Next Tuesday I’ll probably have a Twin Cities report: we are due to eat at Tea House in Minneapolis this weekend. Most of next week’s eating out will happen in New Jersey/New York where I will be for most of the week.