Now, I can never remember the actual name of this place, hence why it is now commonly referred to as Granny’s Pork Shop, or Granny’s for short.
During my first year of teaching in Korea, I worked at a private academy that employed twenty three foreign teachers, all of which lived on the same road. Naturally, we all developed our own local spots amongst the neon drenched streets, and one of mine was Granny’s.
Our street was in an area called Mannyeon-dong. Parked cars lined either side of the street and a poorly tarmc’d road left just enough room for one car to venture down the street at a time. The road was about half a mile long and finished at the river that pierced through Daejeon. Every single building on the street contained some kind of store, restaurant, café or noraebang. Hanging off every wall was a neon sign. Flowing out of every door was laughter.
Granny’s is tucked on the corner of a side-street, barely a stones throw from my first studio apartment. The sign that runs the length of the restaurant is adorned with a cartoon pig and an assortment of flames, along with the actual name of the establishment. The entrance is on the corner, or just from any side of restaurant if they have the concertina doors open.
Upon entering, you may or may not be greeted by Granny, depending on how busy she is. Either way you can find any free table and plonk yourself down on the old, school-like, metal chairs with grubby tennis balls attached to the feet. Just be careful not to trip over the winding maze of bare gas pipes latticed across the floor.
Once Granny comes over, make sure you know what you want. She’ll shout your order back to Grandpa in the butchers room who will layer your samgyeopsal or galbi onto a wooden chopping board before she brings it over. I don’t actually know what drinks they serve other than 600ml bottles of Cass and Chamisul soju as that’s all I ever cared for.
While Grandpa prepares your assorted meats, take some time to load up a beige plastic canteen tray with self-service, all you can eat banchan. Spring onions, fresh garlic, salt, pickled radish, lettuce, onions and ssamjang are all staples.
By now, Granny’s cranked up the gas canister below your flat ceramic grill in the middle of the table, and you’re good to go.
Eat and drink to your hearts content. Enjoy the salty, fatty, chewy pork belly and indulge in the barbecue laden galbi. Chat with your friends about your days. Share your woes. Gossip about who’s sneaking around with who. Speak easy and enjoy the space as if it were your home. We did.
We’d often get through a few beers each and a couple of bottles of soju, sometimes more if it wasn’t a school night. Maybe it was the booze, but every time we ate here, which was pretty much every week, we couldn’t believe how cheap it was. Guests I brought here remarked the same. My friend who has been in Korea for five years was astounded.
I brought my parents here too when they visited me, and they were equally enamored with this raw and unassuming space. I think we frequented it three times over that week, at their request.
Granny was always welcoming to us as foreigners, even when some weren’t, and that always stuck with me. During busy times she’d smile and wave at us as we walked by, if we were lucky enough to catch her eye. She was also always patient with our God awful Korean. I didn’t just call her Granny because of her age, but because she was a surrogate Grandmother to us all in some way.
A small slice of homeliness in an unfamiliar land far from our real homes. A place we could eat and drink so close to our abodes, but so far away from our worries. Granny’s truly was a saving grace.
I’ll be visiting Daejeon again in the next couple of months, and this is the second place on my list to visit… more on the first another time.
Pockets 