Eating in Gangneung

Gangneung is an easy city for a slow food trip: a short stretch of coast holds a tofu village, a coffee street and a handful of seafood habits, all within a bus or taxi ride of one another. This page is about how to put those together. For the history and ingredients behind the cooking, see the Gangneung region page, and for the province, Gangwon.

Chodang sundubu, eaten plain first

Chodang village sits just south of Gyeongpo Beach. VisitKorea says the village takes its name from the Heo family of Chodang, whose members included the writer Heo Gyun and the poet Heo Nanseolheon, and that a reconstructed traditional house stands on the site of the family home. The tofu is made from ground, strained soybeans set into soft curds (sundubu), and VisitKorea notes that the curdling agent comes from the sea. Sources differ on the detail: one VisitKorea page describes bittern drawn from deep water, while the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, summarized on the region page, speaks of East Sea water itself. Either way, the idea is the same, a coagulant from the nearby water.

The classic way to eat it is simple. VisitKorea describes the tofu being served warm and scooped with a spoon, with soy sauce added a little at a time so the salt does not bury the nutty flavor of the beans. A seasoned dipping sauce usually sits alongside. Taste a few spoonfuls plain before reaching for anything else, then move to the stew. The village also has newer dishes: a spicy soft-tofu stew, which in this village often includes clams, and sundubu jjamppong, soft tofu in a hot seafood broth. If you know the home version, sundubu-jjigae is the dish the plain curds turn into once chili is added, and dubu explains the ingredient more broadly. Tofu also appears in desserts here, as soft-serve, gelato and filling for rice cakes.

Coffee street and the beach

Anmok Beach is the other reason people come. Accounts agree that the strip was once known for coffee vending machines, where couples on beach dates drank canned or instant coffee. Specialty cafés followed in the early 2000s, and a barista named Park Yi-chu, who moved from Seoul, is widely credited with opening one of the first and inspiring others to learn roasting. Sources differ by a few years on the exact dates, so treat the early 2000s as the safe summary. The city began an annual coffee festival in 2009, held each October according to a 2020 Jakarta Post feature, and Korea.net's webzine describes Gangneung as a coffee city with a museum devoted to the drink.

Korea.net also links this to an older habit: clean water from the mountains helped build a tea tradition in the area, and coffee is often treated as a modern branch of the same custom. If that interests you, read Korean tea culture. In practical terms, the coffee street is where you spend the slow part of a food day: a long sit by the water after a tofu lunch, not a meal in itself.

Seafood and the mulhoe habit

The Digital Gangneung Culture Encyclopedia describes the city's everyday cooking as a mix of coast and mountain. On the sea side, it lists a dark, round fish called dochi stir-fried with kimchi, a spicy stew made with fish from the Jumunjin coast, and young sea mustard used in wraps and fried snacks. Salted and fermented pollack dishes, it adds, have grown rare as the catch declined. For squid and pollack, see ojingeo and myeongtae.

The same source highlights mulhoe, a cold, tangy raw-fish dish with a broth sweetened with pear juice and chilled with frozen plum broth, associated with the Sacheon area. It is a summer food, eaten cold, and a good contrast to the warm tofu. For how raw fish is handled and ordered, see preparing hoe and hoe culture, and read food safety at home before eating raw seafood if you are pregnant or have a weakened immune system.

Noodles, potatoes and a sample day

Beyond the coast, the local encyclopedia lists jang-kalguksu, wheat-and-soybean noodles in a clam or shellfish broth seasoned with gochujang and doenjang, grated-potato dumplings called gamja-ongsimi, and cold buckwheat noodles in kimchi broth (makguksu). A balanced day might be tofu in the morning, a coffee walk at midday, noodles or mulhoe in the afternoon and a seafood dinner. Check each restaurant's current hours before going, as they change.

For general manners and ordering, see dining etiquette and ordering and paying. The next stop up the coast is Sokcho, and inland in the same province is Chuncheon.