Taste of Daegu – Anjirang Gopchang Street
Located in south-eastern Korea, Daegu, formerly spelled Taegu, is the fourth largest city in South Korea after Seoul, Busan, and Incheon and has many traditional tourist attractions. If you ask any Korean on a food tour in the Daegu area, they will likely pick Anjirang Gopchang Street as one of must-stops for night dining. Gopchang and makchang are two specialties of Daegu and they are a dish of grilled intestines of cattle or pork. Gopchang is prepared from the small intestines, while makchang the large intestines. Fried Makchang goes better with liquor than rice as sub dish. From the early 1970s, the citizens of Daegu have been enjoying hongchang, the fourth stomach of a cow, fried over coal or charcoal fire and seasoned with special soybean paste sauce with garlic and chopped chives. That’s how makchang and gopchang came into being. As a low-fat high-protein food, they contain larger amounts of calcium than regular beef does. Because they are relatively inexpensive and have characteristic flavor, Makchang and gopchang are especially popular in the Daegu region but their popularity has spread to other regions as well.
You can get to Anjirang Gopchang Street by taking Daegu Subway line 1 and getting off at Anjirang station (17 minutes from Dongdaegu Station). You can exit the station through Exit 3 and after walking 200m toward Anjirang intersection, you will see the entrance to Anjirang Gopchang Street.
There are 51 gopchang restaurants along the 500m Gopchang Street and every one of them has a name that reads xx곱창 (gopchang). About 800kg of pork gopchang is being used by these restaurants on a daily basis. It is not possible for them to overcharge tourists because gopchang is jointly purchased in bulk by the local gopchang dealers association and distributed to each restaurant at the same price. No one dares to claim that theirs is the original gopchang. The original creator of the dish is no longer there; because of health problems, she sold her restaurant and left the street in 2013. In addition, no one is soliciting customers to come and eat at their restaurant here because it is illegal to solicit here and if they get caught doing it, they will be fined 200,000 won. No wonder Anjirang Street was selected as one of the nation’s best five Korean food-Themed Streets in 2012 by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.
From around 6 pm, the street is beginning to be filled with people, starting with the restaurants with the greatest number of regulars. By around 7pm, you can hardly find an empty table in every restaurant. It is quite a spectacle to see metal drum tables lining up along the street in front of the restaurants. Interestingly, gopchang is sold by the bowl. The server will bring you gopchang in a large plastic bowl and then put it on a plate or an aluminum bowl. One bowl of gopchang weighs 500g and costs 12,000 won. Two bowls should provide enough anju (side dish for drinking) for a group of four people. About 70% of the customers are young adults in 20s and 30s but the street is also attracting families and gourmets from all over the country.
Address:
63, Daemyeong-ro 36-gil, Nam-gu, Daegu
대구광역시 남구 대명로36길 63
Homepage:
www.안지랑곱창.com (Korean)