짜장면 jjajangmyeonNot spicy

Wheat noodles under a thick black sauce of fermented bean paste, pork and onion. Sweet and salty, not hot at all. Mix it thoroughly; it is served unmixed.

Quoted as printed, from the chapter on reading a Korean menu.

Jjajangmyeon before it is mixed. The sauce sits on top; the noodles underneath are plain.

Allergens, honestly

Korean labelling law names nineteen. These are the ones the sentence above names:

돼지고기 dwaejigogiPork
밀 milWheat

This is only what the sentence above names. Korean stock is built before anything visible reaches the bowl — dried anchovy, clams and simmered bone are ordinary, and soy sauce is usually brewed from wheat as well as soybeans. Ask.

이 국물에 멸치나 조개가 들어 있어요?

i gungmure myeolchina jogaega deureo isseoyo?

Is there anchovy or shellfish in this broth?

The black-noodle shops

Every neighborhood has one, the menu is short, and it is the same short menu everywhere. These shops deliver, and for a lot of households delivery is the whole point of them. If you order two dishes for two people, order one noodle and one fried, and share.

Ordered from the same page of the menu

This is one line of a longer book

The chapter this came from runs to sixteen pages, and the allergy chapter next to it explains what the nineteen leave out. Both are in the guidebook.

See the guidebook