내셔널지오그래픽, 대한민국 최고의 미식도시로 유네스코 음식창의도시 전주 소개
한국인들이 찾는 미식도시, 전통을 혁신하고자 하는 열정이 넘치는 요리사들이 있는 도시로 극찬
▲사진=전주시
(더파워뉴스=이강율 기자) 136년의 역사를 자랑하는 세계적인 미디어인 내셔널지오그래픽이 콩나물국밥과 전주비빔밥, 막걸리 등 전주 음식을 조명하며 전주를 대한민국 최고의 미식도시로 극찬했다.
30일 전주시에 따르면 내셔널지오그래픽은 최근 ‘Why Jeonju is the best place to eat in South Korea(전주가 한국의 최고 미식도시인 이유)’라는 제하의 기사를 통해 남부시장의 콩나물국밥, 비빔밥, 막걸리, 전통차 등 전주의 대표 음식뿐만 아니라 예향 전주의 문화·역사적 정체성을 소개했다.
이 내용은 지난 20일 내셔널지오그래픽 온라인판을 통해 전 세계에 소개됐다.
▲사진=전주시
특히 이 기사에서는 전주비빔밥이 ‘조선 왕조의 역사와 전주의 문화적 유산이 녹아있는 요리’로, 전주는 ‘전통을 혁신하고자 하는 열정이 넘치는 요리사들이 있는 도시’이자 ‘한국인들이 찾는 미식도시’로 각각 평가됐다.
이상숙 국제협력담당관은 “연간 1500만 명이 방문하는 전주는 특히나 해외에서 한 번 방문하면 잊지 못하는 도시이며, 많은 글로벌 미디어사와 세계적인 인사들이 전주의 문화와 음식, 예술 그리고 전주 사람들의 매력에 빠지지 못하며 전주의 홍보대사를 자처하기도 한다”면서 “전주라는 도시브랜드를 지속적으로 세계에 알리기 위해 글로벌브랜딩 등 다각도로 노력하겠다”고 말했다.
☞ 내셔널 지오그래픽 기사 원문
Why Jeonju is the best place to eat in South Korea
Jeonju, in north Jeolla province, is so famed for its food that it’s designated a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, serving subtle twists on classic dishes from bibimbap to rice wine. If you were to get directions to Hyundai-ok, they might read something like this. Head down the central alley of Nambu Market, past the shops selling cheap clothes, wicker baskets and Tupperware; turn right at the cafe advertising both hot and cold coffee; then go left at the junction where two ladies chop onions, sitting right outside a restaurant serving blood sausage. Or you could just follow the sound of hammering.
When I arrive at the restaurant, two cooks stand at a metal counter enthusiastically pounding mounds of garlic with meat tenderisers, adding the pulp along with sliced leeks and chilli to steaming pans behind them. It’s barely 9am but already the main service is over — there are just a few customers inside as I take my place at the counter alongside guide Dan Grey, hard to miss in his bright red T-shirt. “Squid or no squid?” he asks. “That’s the only choice here.” Opting for ‘no squid’, I’m swiftly presented with a small metal pot containing a lightly steamed egg; a platter of kimchi, shrimp paste, seaweed and pickled turnip; and a large black ceramic bowl of broth, with beansprouts and rice bobbing beneath the surface.
Taking my cue from the two women happily slurping at a nearby table, I tuck in, first pouring the egg into the broth. It’s so rich in flavour it borders on meaty, and spicy enough that my nose starts to run after a few spoonfuls. “You can see why we call it haejang-guk — hangover soup,” says Dan. “The heat takes away the headache and the steam is like a sauna for the face.”Open between 6am and 2am in Jeonju’s main market, Hyundai-ok has been reviving the locals with beansprout soup since 1979. It’s a formula that needs no tweaking, as the queues that form at 7am every weekend attest. The stalls in, and spilling out of, the market also show a solid commitment to tradition: there are ones devoted to pak choi, pig’s head soup and steamed snails, and workshops producing great slabs of pressed tofu and vats of sesame oil.This is a city, though, that has no fear of tinkering with favourite recipes. Jeonju sits in the country’s rice bowl, surrounded by waterlogged paddy fields and enormous polytunnels, and has a long-held reputation for the quality of its produce. Dan, a Korean-American food expert and guide for the tour company Intrepid Travel, is on a mission to show me how the city likes to use that produce to shake things up a bit. “It’s the city that Koreans go to for food,” he tells me, “but it’s always been a bit rebellious, a bit individual. Whenever there’s an election, they always seem to vote a different way to the rest of country.”A short walk from the main market, Gajok Hoegwan is a case in point. Like Hyundai-ok, the restaurant has a single dish down to a fine art: bibimbap. Essentially, it’s rice mixed with vegetables and has been eaten in some form in Korea for centuries — a way to use leftovers to create a cheap meal. Gajok Hoegwan, however, has elevated it to new levels. In its first-floor dining room, I find a table by windows covered with traditional paper screens, joining small groups of friends chatting over the clattering and clinking coming from the kitchen.A tray of 12 side dishes appears first: garlic stems with mushrooms, dried turnip, pickled green plums, candied sweet potatoes and anchovies with gochujang (red chilli paste) among them. The main event arrives in a softly gleaming brass bowl: an artistic ensemble of rice, carrots, cucumber, spinach, fiddlehead greens, gochujang and sliced raw beef. The rice has been steamed in oxtail broth, the beef marinated with sesame, ginger and garlic, the gochujang made to a secret recipe. It’s certainly like no leftovers I’ve ever cobbled together. Delicately mixed with metal chopsticks, it’s a comforting, fiery blend where each perfectly balanced ingredient takes equal footing.Opened in 1979 by chef Kim Nyun-im, Gajok Hoegwan is now run by her daughter Kim Yang-mi, a cheerful woman in jeans and Crocs who comes over to chat as I eat. The intricacy of the dish is explained when she tells me her mother was inspired by the unique place her city holds in the country’s history books. Jeonju was the hometown of the royal Joseon dynasty, who ruled the wider region between 1392 and 1910.
Open between 6am and 2am in Jeonju’s main market, Hyundai-ok has been reviving the locals with beansprout soup since 1979. It’s a formula that needs no tweaking, as the queues that form at 7am every weekend attest. The stalls in, and spilling out of, the market also show a solid commitment to tradition: there are ones devoted to pak choi, pig’s head soup and steamed snails, and workshops producing great slabs of pressed tofu and vats of sesame oil.
This is a city, though, that has no fear of tinkering with favourite recipes. Jeonju sits in the country’s rice bowl, surrounded by waterlogged paddy fields and enormous polytunnels, and has a long-held reputation for the quality of its produce. Dan, a Korean-American food expert and guide for the tour company Intrepid Travel, is on a mission to show me how the city likes to use that produce to shake things up a bit. “It’s the city that Koreans go to for food,” he tells me, “but it’s always been a bit rebellious, a bit individual. Whenever there’s an election, they always seem to vote a different way to the rest of country.”
A short walk from the main market, Gajok Hoegwan is a case in point. Like Hyundai-ok, the restaurant has a single dish down to a fine art: bibimbap. Essentially, it’s rice mixed with vegetables and has been eaten in some form in Korea for centuries — a way to use leftovers to create a cheap meal. Gajok Hoegwan, however, has elevated it to new levels. In its first-floor dining room, I find a table by windows covered with traditional paper screens, joining small groups of friends chatting over the clattering and clinking coming from the kitchen.
A tray of 12 side dishes appears first: garlic stems with mushrooms, dried turnip, pickled green plums, candied sweet potatoes and anchovies with gochujang (red chilli paste) among them. The main event arrives in a softly gleaming brass bowl: an artistic ensemble of rice, carrots, cucumber, spinach, fiddlehead greens, gochujang and sliced raw beef. The rice has been steamed in oxtail broth, the beef marinated with sesame, ginger and garlic, the gochujang made to a secret recipe. It’s certainly like no leftovers I’ve ever cobbled together. Delicately mixed with metal chopsticks, it’s a comforting, fiery blend where each perfectly balanced ingredient takes equal footing.
Opened in 1979 by chef Kim Nyun-im, Gajok Hoegwan is now run by her daughter Kim Yang-mi, a cheerful woman in jeans and Crocs who comes over to chat as I eat. The intricacy of the dish is explained when she tells me her mother was inspired by the unique place her city holds in the country’s history books. Jeonju was the hometown of the royal Joseon dynasty, who ruled the wider region between 1392 and 1910.
Kim Nyun-im took that culinary heritage and added her own stamp to the recipe, perfecting it over many years. “Bibimbap is a traditional food in this area, but this is Joseon style,” Kim Yang-mi explains, gesturing at the side dishes and brass bowls. “My mother wanted to reintroduce the culture into the cuisine — serve the right food in the right location.”
Many others have sought to reinvent the dish since Kim Nyun-im first started dabbling. If you wish to try bibimbap baguettes and bibimbap croquettes, which come in plastic wrappers ready to be heated in the microwave, you can stroll a few hundred metres southeast to Jeonju Hanok Village, a collection of 800 traditional buildings restored over the past 15 years. For bibimbap served in a waffle, you’ll have to head further east to a cafe on the sloping lanes of Jaman Mural Village, whose houses are daubed in artworks ranging from a woman sitting wistfully on a crescent moon to a dragon swishing an impressive tail.
None of these variations is likely to impress a Joseon emperor, but they certainly please the steady stream of local families and visitors who wander the streets of the hanok village, peering into its temples, shrines, shops and museums, each marked by distinctive clay roof tiles and wooden rafters. It’s immediately apparent how important food is to the city here: it’s everywhere. Friends chat under the branches of Korean pine trees, making their way through bags of water parsley dumplings. Children clutch their parents’ hands, holding long sticks of speared marshmallows in their other, sticky palms. Teenage girls sit on benches trying not to spill chicken on to the silk hanbok dresses they’ve rented for informal photo shoots around the lanes. There are traditional teahouses serving aromatic blends in ceremonies the Joseon would recognise, and modern cafes serving great bowls of shaved ice topped with matcha ice cream, brownie chunks, mint leaves and pine sprigs.
On the edge of the village, my final stop is in a nondescript building with none of the architectural flourishes of the hanok. Here, Choi In-duk and her sister Choi Jeon-won serve a new spin on another cherished Jeonju culinary tradition: a makgeolli session. The activity — involving low-strength makgeolli (a type of fermented rice wine of 6-9% ABV) accompanied by small dishes — is centred around the Samchun-dong District south west of the city and tends to see groups of friends moving from bar to bar, drinking generally low-quality makgeolli and eating generally low-quality snacks. At the sisters’ industrial-styled Yetchon Makgeolli restaurant, the experience is still squarely rooted in the convivial, but the quality is anything but low.
Tucking her black hair behind her ears, Choi In-duk raises a brass teapot of Yetchon’s own-make makgeolli and pours it into bowls, telling me, “If people come to Jeonju, they know they have to drink makgeolli. The water is very pure here, and that makes better quality.” The resulting drink is cloudy and uniquely creamy, with the slight tang of blue cheese. One kettle of makgeolli costs just 3,300 KRW (£1.85) and comes with enough dishes to keep a group of four going for quite some time: among them, chicken with wild sesame seeds, mussels in leek broth, braised pork, kimchi pancakes and soy-marinated crab. It’s less beer and snacks than a wine-paired feast. “I want to care for my guests,” Choi In-duk continues. “And the way I do that is with honest, high-quality food and honest, high-quality drinks.”
전주가 한국의 최고 미식도시인 이유
전라북도에 위치한 전주는 음식으로 너무나 유명해서 유네스코 음식 창의 도시로 지정되었으며, 비빔밥부터 막걸리까지 전통 요리에 미묘한 변화를 주어 제공합니다. 현대옥으로 가는 길을 설명하자면 이렇습니다. 남부시장 중앙 골목을 따라 싼 옷, 등나무 바구니, 타파웨어 파는 가게들을 지나가세요. 뜨거운 커피와 차가운 커피 든 다 판다고 써져있는 카페에서 오른쪽으로 돌아 순대를 파는 식당 바로 앞에서 양파를 썰고 있는 두 아주머니가 있는 교차로에서 왼쪽으로 가세요. 아니면 그냥 망치 소리를 따라가도 됩니다.
식당에 도착하면, 두 명의 요리사가 금속 조리대에서 열심히 마늘을 망치로 두들기고 있는 모습을 볼 수 있습니다. 요리사들은 으깬 마늘과 잘게 썬 파, 고추를 뒤에 있는 김이 모락모락 나는 팬에 넣고 있습니다. 아직 오전 9시가 채 되지 않았지만 이미 손님들이 많이 오는 시간은 끝났습니다. 제가 밝은 빨간색 티셔츠를 입은 가이드 댄 그레이와 함께 카운터에 자리를 잡을 때쯤에는 안에 손님이 몇 명 없었습니다. "오징어 넣을까요, 빼고 할까요?" 그가 묻습니다. "여기선 그게 유일한 선택이에요." 저는 '오징어 빼고'를 선택했고, 곧바로 살짝 찐 계란(수란)이 담긴 작은 그릇과 김치, 새우젓, 김, 무 말랭이가 담긴 접시, 그리고 콩나물과 밥이 둥실 떠 있는 국물이 담긴 큰 검은 세라믹 그릇(뚝배기)이 나왔습니다.
근처 테이블에서 행복하게 국물을 들이키는 두 여성을 보고 저도 먹기 시작했습니다. 먼저 계란을 국물에 부었습니다. 국물은 너무나 풍부한 맛이 나서 거의 고기 맛에 가까웠고, 몇 숟가락 먹자 코가 시큰거릴 정도로 매웠습니다. "우리가 이걸 해장국이라고 부르는 이유를 알 수 있죠," 댄이 말합니다. "열기가 두통을 없애주고 김은 얼굴에 사우나 효과를 주니까요.“
전주의 주요 시장에서 오전 6시부터 오전 2시까지 영업하는 현대옥은 1979년부터 콩나물국으로 현지인들의 기운을 되살려 왔습니다. 매주 주말 오전 7시마다 줄을 서는 것을 보면 이 공식이 변경될 필요가 없다는 것을 알 수 있습니다. 시장 안팎의 노점상들도 전통에 대한 확고한 헌신을 보여줍니다. 청경채, 돼지머리 국(돼지국밥), 다슬기 찜을 파는 가게들이 있고, 큰 덩어리의 두부와 참기름을 만드는 작업장도 있습니다.
하지만 이 도시는 좋아하는 요리법을 손보는 것을 두려워하지 않습니다. 전주는 물에 잠긴 논과 거대한 비닐하우스로 둘러싸인 나라의 쌀 생산지에 위치해 있으며, 오랫동안 농산물의 품질로 유명했습니다. 한국계 미국인 음식 전문가이자 여행사 인트레피드 트래블의 가이드인 댄은 이 도시가 그 농산물을 어떻게 활용해 변화를 주는지 보여주려고 합니다. "전주는 한국인들이 음식을 먹으러 오는 도시예요," 그가 말합니다.
"하지만 항상 약간 반항적이고 개성이 있었죠. 선거 때마다 항상 나라의 다른 지역과 다른 투표성향도 있는 거 같구요.“
주요 시장에서 조금만 걸어가면 가족회관이 있는데, 이곳이 바로 그 예입니다. 현대옥처럼 이 식당도 단 하나의 요리를 예술의 경지까지 끌어올렸습니다:
