Son of a Chef

I have lost count of how many times I’ve been to Jungang market. It’s certainly on the old side of town and for a lot of people, it’s a bit out of the way. However, if you’re traveling to Cheonan station, it’s right there and an easy stop-in.

The food is absolutely worth checking out. There’s not much you can do wrong here. I’ve had most everything and that includes trying a handful of the food stalls as well. This time, I was in for hotteok and dakbal. Well, to be honest, hotteok is an every trip selection. Jungang market has some of the best hotteok in Korea but I’ll get to that later.

With the rising cost of fruit, the market is a great place to pick up some farm fresh produce at discount rates. A dozen apples or so will run half the price of the supermarket. Though, we’ve been watching that watermelon price rise and rise. It was even high at the market.

The stalls are mostly friendly. Of course, we’re still running on cash these days, so you should make sure to have full pockets when you go.

It’s not quite as big as some of the markets up in Seoul but for Chungnam, it’s quite a good size and the liveliness is notable. If you go on the weekend, there really is a flurry of activity. It can remind you of what the olds days might have felt like.

From bibimmyeon to sundae, you can get most anything here. But the indoor dining does close a little early compared to what one might expect, so keep that in mind. For late dining, you may need to pop north for a second round or head closer to Cheonan station.

Still, there’s a romance to being at the market. The clientele may be aging a bit these days but there’s still plenty to eat and try. You can even make friends if you sit down at the right stall. My Korean is ever improving and I had a nice long chat about American politics with a Samsung engineer about to retire. He was big on Biden and the democrats, if you were curious.

We shared some dakbal and he poked fun at me for not liking dakbal with bones in but that’s okay. Really, I cannot find myself eating it well. There’s just not enough meat for me to chew a chicken foot off the bone. But boneless chicken feet, I could eat that all day long. After the usual warnings from the stall owner, yes, I know it’s spicy and I want it anyway, I was chowing down with a cold beer. It’s been a hot summer, so that was quite refreshing.

Of course, with any show, there’s a star. And for the market, its star is the hotteok at the end of the line. Near the southern entrance to the market, you’ll always see a line waiting for hotteok priced like it’s 2009: 2 for 1000 won. It’s nice to see some things remain immune to inflation. Waiting in line, you’ll see the entire makeup of the city get quantities of hotteok spanning the range of 2 to 100. Once, I waited 30 minutes to end up 2nd in line to somebody who ordered 40 to go. I waited another 5-10 minutes after that to get my fill.

There’s a lot of different types of hotteok that you can eat in Korea and this one is quite simple. What makes it special is both the price and technique. I’ve never seen hotteok cooked so hot and so simply. It’s on the verge of being a grill-fried hotteok and the small breads puff and inflate as they’re cooking. The oil is so hot that the sugar cinnamon caramelizes in the middle while it’s cooking. After they’re finished, they hand you a confectionery nuclear bomb and you need to be careful when eating for maybe 5 to 10 minutes afterwards. I made the mistake one time only waiting a minute or so for it to cool. The cinnamon sugar lava sat on my lip for about 2 seconds too long. Of course, I still ate the whole thing.

I could write a lot more about this market and maybe one time I’ll put together a deeper guide. But for now, I ‘ll push this off and give myself an excuse to head back at a later time.