I have been obsessing over Netflix’s show “A Nation of Broth” which over three episodes, with endless food-porn, documents the centrality of soups and stews in Korean cuisine. The show made me crave some Korean soup, so I went over to the HMart food court on North Front Street, which has a ton of options for soup and stew. The food court has stalls selling varieties of kimchi Jjigaes, Jjamppong, Soondudu, and Raman, and I went with the Dumpling Jjamppong at Jeong’s Kitchen aka Danny’s Kitchen. Jjamppong is a noodle soup of spicy seafood or pork broth, usually with onion, cabbage, carrots and seafood and is commonly found in Korean-Chinese restaurants.

The Dumplings: The Dumpling Jjamppong was a huge, delicious, dish of food, with four dumplings, shrimp, squid, muscles, carrots, onion, scallions and cabbage piled over noodles, with a deeply rich, super spicy, seafood broth. The dumplings were either steamed or boiled and then added into the soup and were pretty standard, qyoza style pork dumplings, but the spicy seafood broth infused additional flavor into the dumplings, which completely elevated them. Combined with the soup, they turned out to be excellent dumplings. I also enjoyed the cabbage in the soup, the crunch added a great textural component to the dish. The broth was really rich and flavorful and for me very spicy, but the spice did not overwhelm the seafood flavor.

The Location: Jeong’s Noodles is in the food court at the HMart on North Front street in Philadelphia. Food courts in Asian supermarkets are nothing like the terrible Sbarro Pizza-Panda Express-Chipotle ridden food courts in airports and suburban malls, they often have amazing and diverse food options and are some of my favorite places to eat.