Be ready to get your hands busy when eating Korean pork stew with potato, gamjatang.
Gamjatang, is steaming, spicy red broth filled with generous amounts of savory bones of meat, meaning that you have to pick, extract the bits of meat on the bones and suck on the most tasty soup from tiny crevices: forks or chopsticks are too clumsy for the job.
Interestingly, gamja means potato, and tang is soup, so gamjatang is supposed to mean a potato soup but it’s not. The soup has some chunks of potatoes in it but the bones with meat are the main ingredient.
Here is the most popular ganjatang restaurant in Seoul that is beloved especially by U.S. soldiers in Korea.
△Il-me Gamjatang
1-2 Huam-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul
Both locals and U.S. soldiers in the Yongsan U.S. Garrison flock to Il-me Gamjatang for lunch, the best gamjatang restaurant known in this area. The soup is only 6,000 won (around $5.20) and other dishes are also available and written on the menu. For a group of two or more, it is recommended to order a large plate of gamjatang whose starting price is 15,000 won.
Rice comes with the soup and is not an extra. You should scoop up some rice, dip it in the mouthwatering soup and put some meat on it which would make it a medley of goodness and perfection.
By Bak Se-hwan (
sh@heraldcorp.com)