When I was looking at the itinerary for our trip I was most concerned about breakfast. I saw 순두부 and instantly thought of sundubu-jjigae which once upon a time was my welcome dinner to Korea. It’s a spicy tofu dish that I just can’t handle. And to have it for breakfast sounded like my worst nightmare. But I was able to talk with the teacher who organized the trip and she explained that the restaurant had two options, spicy and not. Which was to my relief.
It turns out the Gangneung is known for this 순두부, or soft tofu meal. There’s even a tofu village. What I ended up with was a Korean set menu with tofu (순두부 백반) which was 8,000 won. My coworkers who wanted something more akin to the spicy stew ordered the soft tofu hot pot with rice which had a minimum of two people required in order to order it. The price was the same, but mine was just for me. I didn’t have to share it.
It was…very plain. There was little to no flavor. It just tasted like warm wet tofu. I added some soy sauce to it which helped and it was filling.
The restaurant we went to was also very old. We were able to sit at a table, but a lot of the support columns were whole tree trunks. And the way towards the restaurant was very old looking with ancient spider webs that don’t look like they’ve ever been deterred and traditional kimchi onggis.