Street food in Seoul is a treasure hunt. You go from stall to stall and try different flavours done with different, but precise techniques. Many are actually sweet – newsflash: we will not leave this country without getting type 2 diabetes – but interesting nevertheless. Street food snacks range from:
- egg bread (gyeran ppang)
- fish-shaped bread with sweet red bean filling (bungeoppang)
- deep fried dumplings filled with sugar, honey, nuts and cinnamon (hotteok)
- spicy rice cakes (teokbokki)
- fish cakes (odeng)
- various foods on a skewer (kkochi)
- deep fried vegetables (twigim)
- pancakes (jeon)
- dry octopus and squid
- rice rolls (gimbap)
I don't have pictures to illustrate them all but will definitely update this post with more pictures as soon as I buy the next yummy snacks.
One can easily have a full meal going from one stall to another. No language skills are needed here. Money does the talking.
Some stalls cater for office people and close late afternoon. It's very common to see businessmen and women in dark suits holding their fish sticks and hanging out around a stall just after leaving the office.
Other Koreans put up their stalls around 5pm in busy areas, especially where nightlife is bustling – such as Hongdae (the university neighborhood) and Myeongdong (Seoul’s shopping haven).
In Namdaemun market, since they are more used to foreigners and especially when the business is slow in the evening, they even call out for us. In other parts of town, mainly in Insadong and in Hongdae, where for the first time in my life I was stuck in a queue to get into the subway station, they couldn’t care less.
In Namdaemun market, since they are more used to foreigners and especially when the business is slow in the evening, they even call out for us. In other parts of town, mainly in Insadong and in Hongdae, where for the first time in my life I was stuck in a queue to get into the subway station, they couldn’t care less.
In Gwangjang market they even have specific alleys according to the type of food – pancakes, meat (including pig trotters, yes, pig trotters), sashimi / seafood and so on… It’s so crowded that we had to queue for at least 10 minutes to buy two bindaetteok (see pic below). The place was so full that the ajumma waiting tables was pushing everyone in her way to get through. "Excuse me" is not something you hear often in Korea, even though they behave orderly, generally speaking.
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| Gwangjang Market |
No matter where you are in Seoul, if you have a couple of won in your wallet, you won’t go hungry.
