The idea for this place came about one day while I was browsing the contents of Korean Airline’s inflight magazine and I read about a small village north of Yeongcheon very close to the large city of Daegu. This town decided they needed an identity and a signature dish. And it so happens that there is an observatory right on top of Bohyeonsan 부현산 and apparently they nicked-name the village “Star City” for us English-inclined speakers, and since there seems to be quite a number of Korean parsley growers, they started making a fuss out of grilled pork belly 삼겹살 and parsley 미나리.
And as it always goes with me, time to check it out. Interesting combination. Stars and parsley. I recall the time I was in turkey close to the Syrian border where every meal seems to have a large side serving of parsley and how I loved it.
Well, the first problem is that Yeongcheon is quite a bit of a distance from Seoul. In fact it is smack close to Busan, for those that don’t know where Daegu is. I didn’t think that public transport is a good idea so I drove there instead. Door to door from Seoul figure 4-5 hours including stops along the excellent rest stops operated by EX. I’ll go on a longer post one day, but these rest stops are spaced 30-40km apart and they are like a fully spec-out mini malls.
This time I navigated with the help of a Garmin GPS for the zoomed out Kee of what’s coming in 10km and auto routing from Daum maps on an iPhone set to see what is coming up 1km ahead.
Ok now star village in Korean would be 별빛마을, literally translated. I don’t recall seeing that on the sign boards, would be better following the brown sign for Bohyeonsan Observatory. The highway exit close to Yeongcheon would be 북영천IC and head up north. Star village would be right at the foot of the mountain, you can’t miss it as you will get to see a big sign when you enter the village.
I don’t know if I should even recommend a place to eat this special grilled dish. It’s not that difficult to make it as long as you have fresh ingredients. So I’m taking an educated guess that any farm or restaurant in the village do a good version of it.
What did I do? I arrived at Star Village around 5:30pm, hungry, and eager to have something to eat. Turned into the first place I see that looks like a restaurant and they seem to say that they do have samgyeopsal and minari. Seems that you order the pork and then either 0.5kg or 1kr of parsley (aka Minari 미나리). And then out comes the grill pan, and the kimchi side dish and doenjang sauce. And may I add that being a village, everything is made at home and taste way way way better than anything you find in a big restaurant. In Korea, go rural and go small.
So. Pork grilled on a hot plate is nothing special. It is not even marinated. But the fresh parsley, how can I say it… Korean parsley doesn’t have that parsley-ish smell and taste that we are all used to. When fresh it is slightly sweet. So you grill the parsley a little next to the pork (I believe it’s to soak up the lard) and the you wrap the parsley around the pork. And it is freaking good. Parsley adds that little extra texture to the pork and sweetens the package. Naturally I started off eating the leaves and then realized the stalks are good too, in a different way. I’m not going to describe the taste here but rest assured, at least for me, it’s a Michelin 3 Star dish – apparently what they rate for something worth making the trip all the way to have a go.
And man were the village people friendly. Started asking for a place to stay and they even gave a call to a nearby community center and found that it was open. The name and contact is as follows 별빛문화센터 (011 9586 3928 tomz2001@naver. com). You get a room where you sleep on the floor, Korean ondol style and shared bathroom but it is clean and the manager, again is super friendly.
While at the restaurant we got to talk And got help from the workers at a nearby Bohyeonsan astronomy museum as they also had dinner at the same place. And it turned out to be a chance encounter.
So the museum is back down where I came from, and after dinner the next session was at 8 pm. The place is shut till the session time. People wait inside their cars. The reason is that in every session there are guides bringing guests around the tours and the planetarium.
As we recognized the people working there we got a special treatment. They gave a personalized tour, including a university student intern giving a lecture of the stars and constellations outdoors with a high powered laser pointer. I knew the big bear, or plow, but never knew where the rest were. And the laser pointer did its job. Got to use the telescopes too, not the large one they use for research but big enough to see craters on the moon and clusters of stars. All these were on roof top and you could see the retractable sliding roof covering the place. The sky on this night was clear enough to see almost everything.
Apart from this ground level observatory museum, one could also drive up to the top of Bohyeonsan. In the evening I was there, the car park was the only accessible place, the observatory on the peak of the mountain closed to public. I spent 30mins there taking photos and during that time they were other cars coming up close to midnight. I couldn’t say it was an ideal place to take photos there are towns polluting the lights along almost all horizons. And the wind here is strong too.
Well, for this trip I was only there for one night and I can sum it up to be a long long drive and had a unique dish where i probably went overboard with the amount of parsley I ate and ended with a great personalized tour of the observatory museum. The people here are great, no English unfortunately, so brush up your broken Korean before coming. There’s apparently a farm nearby for horseriding, which I didn’t get to check yet. Overall I loved it, but the 8-9 hours of driving in total probably requires a long sleep to recover from.
Recommended destination. As usual, drop me a note if you need help.
nangka.org 