From Rice Soup at Four in the Morning to Starch-Sauce Noodles at Noon: Gunsan's Table by the Hour

Gunsan's day begins before sunrise at the steamed-up windows of the old downtown's rice soup restaurants. Ilhaeok in Sinchang-dong is a bean sprout soup with rice restaurant that opens at 04:00 every day. Rice and bean sprouts are boiled together while keeping the sprouts crisp, and the clear, refreshing broth warms an early-morning traveler at once.

At 06:00, Hanirok on Guyeong 3-gil takes over the baton. Right across from Chowon Photo Studio, this place's signature dish is beef and radish soup with a clear, deep broth. After finishing a bowl of rice soup with soft-cooked radish and tender beef, you can start a walk around 07:00 with the quiet Chowon Photo Studio alleys to yourself, before the tourists arrive.

After your morning walk, head to 177 Jungang-ro and you will find Iseongdang, which opens at 08:00 sharp. Opened in 1945, it is the oldest bakery still operating in Korea. Its signature items are red bean bread, a thin crust packed with sweet whole red beans, and vegetable bread filled with crisp cabbage salad.

Long lines stretch outside the building during the day. Come around 08:00, right after opening, and you can get warm bread fresh from the oven with relative ease. It is the ideal time to try vegetable bread with a morning coffee in the shop's cafe corner, or to pack some as a travel snack.

In the port city of Gunsan, ethnic Chinese culture and West Sea seafood combined to build a distinct line of Chinese cooking. Bokseongnu in Miwon-dong is a long-running restaurant open only 10:00–16:00. It won a nationwide reputation for spicy seafood noodle soup in a rich broth piled high with pork, squid, cockles and mussels, and for starch-sauce noodles topped with stir-fried meat.

To taste spicy chili black bean noodles made with chili oil side by side with mild starch-sauce noodles, there is Jirinseong on Miwon-ro. If you want a place whose building is itself modern cultural heritage, head to Binhaewon in Jangmi-dong. Binhaewon was founded in the early 1950s by Wang Geun-seok, an ethnic Chinese resident. Its high-ceilinged halls on the 1st and 2nd floors and ornate Chinese-style ceiling decorations remain intact. It serves Gunsan's own white starch-sauce noodles, with seafood and vegetables stir-fried thick in a starch sauce, and three-delicacy dry black bean noodles.

After a day of modern architecture and coastal walks, the evening table suits jang dishes: seasonal West Sea seafood aged in a soy sauce marinade. Jjaebo Sikdang Main Branch on Guyeong 6-gil specializes in soy-marinated crab and soy-marinated seafood. It takes its name from 'Jjaebo Wharf', an old place name for Gunsan's inner harbor.

The 'Jjaebo Assorted Marinated Seafood Set Meal' puts blue crab, shrimp, abalone, turban shell and salmon on one table. The soy marinade is savory without being salty, and it comes with flying fish roe and laver for a variety of textures. The food culture of the port city of Gunsan is condensed in this timetable, which starts with hot rice soup at four in the morning, moves through Chinese food at noon and ends with marinated seafood in the evening.