Everyone goes to Gwangjang Market at noon, when the bindaetteok griddles are three deep in tourists. I went at 7 a.m. on a Thursday, when the market belongs to the people who run it.
The Market Before the Crowds
The gates are technically always open, but the market wakes in stages. At seven, the fabric wholesalers on the second floor are already hauling bolts of hanbok silk, and the food stalls in the center are lit but half-empty — vendors eating their own breakfast on the customer benches, ajummas sharpening knives, the first oil hitting the griddles. The Netflix-famous knife-cut noodle stall had no line. There was just a woman and a bowl and a rolling pin.
Breakfast of Champions
I sat at a yukhoe stall — raw marinated beef, julienned over Korean pear with a raw egg yolk — because the butcher two stalls down was literally breaking down a side of beef, and it seemed wrong to eat anything else. The owner sliced the beef to order, dressed it with sesame oil and garlic, and slid it over with a shot of the house soju I did not ask for and did not refuse. Yukhoe at 7:30 in the morning is either a terrible idea or a perfect one. It was perfect.
The bindaetteok came next — mung bean pancakes fried to order, crispy-edged and soft inside, eaten standing at the griddle with a dish of onion-soy dipping sauce. The woman frying them had been at that stall, she told me through a customer-translator, for thirty-one years.
Why Early Wins
By 10:00 the tour groups arrive and the market becomes a performance of itself — still delicious, still worth it, but different. At dawn it is a workplace that happens to feed you. The vendors have time to talk. The food is the same food; the market around it is a different market entirely.
Go early. Sit at the stalls with the plastic stools. Eat what the vendors eat.