First meal, we agreed to have local food. The top must-eat foods in Busan seemed to be 밀면 milmyeon (wheat noodles), 돼지국밥 pork and rice soup (dwaeji gukbap), 어묵 eomuk (fish cake), and 냉채족발 (naegje jokbal) pork trotters with chilled vegetables. On hindsight, we did 3 out of 4 which was quite a feat, yes?
Let's start with dwaeji gukbap or loosely translated as pork rice soup. Bonjeon Dwaejigukbap was about 5 minutes from the KTX station and within walking distance to McDonalds too. We were hungry and weather was nicely cooling. There was a line outside of the shop by the time we were there at about 7.23pm. Waited for 20 minutes before we got seated.
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| Busan KTX station |
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| Bonjeon Dwaejigukbap (left) shares the same building as Motel 3.6.9 |
The place had local tourists plus the foreign tourists like us. The place is casual and no-frills. The ahjumma running the place was rather strict and placed more emphasis on guys. Pretty traditional I'd think.
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| menu |
The menu was rather straightforward too. Reasonably priced and slightly cheaper than Seoul. We ordered almost everything from the food menu.
Once the order had been taken, the staff will bring forth the side dishes. On the table, there was a pot of something that looked like chinchalok, fermented small fish. Tasted extremely salty and not pungent as chinchalok.
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| Jeotgal 醢 |
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| raw green chilies and onions, kimchi and spicy spring onions (back) |
The kimchi was refillable, if you wish to have more. The green chilies were rather powerful and I learnt it, the hard way. The burn was strong and stayed for quite a while (about 10 minutes).
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| super spicy! |
Initially thought that the sundae gukbap 순대국밥 would taste funky but it was pretty good. The sundae was cooked till soft and when eaten with the light tasting soup, it warmed our tummies and hearts.
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| 순대국밥 |
There was a gukbap with pigs stomach and that tasted really familiar. Much like the pig stomach soup back home. All the soup bases are similar and very mild tasting. One could add the jeotgal to season it a bit.
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| pig stomach gukbap 섞어탕반 |
Actually, the ahjumma did share with us on how one should be eating the gukbap. She said, add a bit of the jeotgal to the soup and then throw in a bunch of those seasoned spicy spring onions. Depends on your preference actually. One could do original and then alter the taste with the side-dishes.
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| 돼지국밥 (pork bits rice soup) |
For the premium set, the boiled pork belly was sliced thinly but intact while the regular pork rice soup had smaller bits of the pork meat.
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| pork belly gukbap |
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| porridge and beer? |
Good thing about dwaeji gukbap is that you won't end up feeling bloated or very full. The amount of rice in the soup was either half or about two third of a normal bowl.
Bonjeon Dwaejigukbap 본전 돼지국밥
Address: 3-8 Jungang-daero 214beon-gil, Choryang-dong, Dong-gu, Busan, South KoreaPhone: +82 51-441-2946
Business Hours:
Daily 830am to 930pm
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