SPICY PORK DUMPLINGS at Shinsegae Department Store Food Court in Busan

The Shinsegae Department store in Busan is a massive shopping center. I hungrily stumbled upon one of the food courts while cruising through the center near it’s closing time. It’s a shame that I found it when the department store was near closing.

The food court is HUGE. By the time I found it though most of the stalls were closed or cleaning up and closing for the night so it was slim pickings.

Fortunately, I was able to find a stall that had some dumplings. I purchased a few pork dumplings and some spicy pork dumplings.

The pork dumplings weren’t too bad but the meat filling to dough ratio was kind of lacking. It didn’t seem like there was enough filling in these. It didnt help that it was closing time and the dumplings had probably been sitting there for a decent amount of time so the fresheness factor wasn’t there either.

The filling itself had decent flavor but it was tinged with some sweetness. Not entirely sure where that was deriving from but I wasn’t a big fan of that kick. Overall the pork dumplings were decent but didn’t really stand out in any way.

The spicy pork dumpling was the same but was wrapped in a different dumpling wrapper. The spice was a pleasant surprise and had some kimchi in it which added a satisfying crunch to each bite.

Outside of that, the flavor was largely the same as the regular pork dumpling with that same small hint of sweetness. I enjoyed the spicy dumpling more than the regular one due to the spice and the crunch the kimchi added. It had a much better ratio of dumpling to filling as well.

I’d love to go back to the food court on the next visit to Busan just because there are so many options and it would be interesting to see the place bustling with hungry shopppers.