Dongnae-pajeon동래파전

Pajeon doesn't appear in Joseon-era texts; it turns up later, in cookbooks such as Joseon yori jebeop. The version from Dongnae in Busan is said to owe its fame to geography. Dongnae sits close to Miryang, known for green onions, and Eonyang, known for water dropwort, and it faces the sea, so seafood was plentiful. Another hallmark is a batter of wheat and rice flour mixed with anchovy broth, with an egg cracked over the top just before the pancake is done.

No old document records where Dongnae pajeon (동래파전) came from, so its origins live on in oral tradition. One story says it was offered to the king on Samjinnal, the third day of the third lunar month. Locals have described it as an early-spring dish eaten before the cherry blossoms open, and as a dish served at memorial rites in well-to-do families. Another account says that when Dongnae was a regional seat of government, it was a prized dish at banquets that the gyobang, the school that trained gisaeng entertainers, held for officials and foreign envoys.

According to that account, pajeon reached ordinary people in the late Joseon period, when gisaeng freed from their status began selling food around the Dongnae market to make a living. The traditional method lays green onions neatly on a round griddle, adds seafood and beef, pours over a batter of rice and glutinous rice flour, and covers it with a lid so it half-steams. Near the old market grounds, one restaurant traces its pajeon back to a great-grandmother who fried it on market days in the 1950s.