Local Eats

Seven young people moved from cities across Korea to a farming village under an old fortress, gutted a rice warehouse, and started grinding patties by hand. The burger is worth the detour; the story of why it exists is worth the article.

In the valley where Korea’s first tea was planted in 828 CE, a seventh-generation farm rents you a basket of tea, a kettle and a hillside pavilion for an hour. How the reservation works, the story of the thousand-year-old tea tree, and the 2.7km trail that strings it all together.

A tiny fishing village on Hadong’s coast sells gizzard shad straight off its own boats, at prices that change with the day’s catch. The proverb about the runaway daughter-in-law, the white observatory people compare to Santorini, and why summer and autumn serve the same fish two different ways.

A 1933 weaving mill on Ganghwa Island went bust in 1958, spent sixty years as a pickle factory and then a ruin, and reopened in 2018 as a cafe the size of a warehouse. The industry it belonged to, what a coffee costs, and why the water table down the middle is the point.

A fully plant-based bakery on the Ganghwa coast road with no shop sign, a dolmen sculpture for a landmark, and windows facing the strait that saw off two nineteenth-century Western fleets. What to order, when it opens, and why it closes on Fridays.

Nine bowls of naengmyeon worth traveling for — Pyongyang-style in Seoul and Gwangju, spicy Hamheung bowls in Sokcho and Busan, and Jinju’s seafood-broth original. A field-tested cold noodle route across Korea, with addresses in English and Korean.