What do you do when you're walking down a quiet market street and suddenly see a hoard of Korean ladies pushing and shoving their way toward what appears to be a "lineup", near a rather indistinct looking stand? Fortunately, our many years of travel experience has taught us the answer to this universal question.. you push and shove your way in the same direction, and order whatever they're having!!
That pretty much summarizes our first, but certainly not last, amazing food experience in Seoul, Korea. The Korean food scene in Canada is relatively small compared to other Asian cuisines, so food-wise, we didn't really know what to expect (other than kimchi)! Within our first 2 nights in Seoul, we quickly discovered that our Korean food experiences to-date were fairly poor examples of what cuisine is really like in Korea. Korean food is soooooo good - we LOVE it, and now understand why Seoul tops the "best street-food" list for so many travellers!
It's not surprising that our original plan of visiting tourist sites quickly evolved to instead revolve around visiting markets to indulge in the variety of Street foods… Our rule was simple - if there's a line up, we have to try it! The best part about sampling street food here is that it's so inexpensive that there's no risk of spending a lot of money on something that turns out to be gross (which surprisingly never happened)! Here are a few places and foods we tried:
Myeong-dong Market - Gyeran-ppang (egg bread) and potato spirals
We discovered Hodduk at Namdaeum market and it immediately became one of our favourites! It's a bit like a thin doughnut/pancake stuffed with brown sugar & cinnamon and fried.
Gwangjang Market - for Bindaetteok (mungbean pancakes) and Gimbap (Korean "sushi")
Insadong - we found so many deep fried (Twigim) goodies here like Tteokbokki, Croquettes, Noodle Hotteok... we went a little overboard and nearly ate ourselves sick!
We also tried an assortment of interesting-looking restaurants where we tried Bibimbap (meat/veggies/rice in a sizzling hot stone bowl), Galbi (BBQ meat).
When you try so many new things, you're bound to encounter something... different. The night we arrived in Seoul, we popped into a nearby restaurant for dinner - one of the only places still open. Dom ordered the "seafood soup", which should more accurately have been translated to English as "seafood-guts-and-other-unidentifiable-innards soup".. or at least that's what we "think" he got..!! Dom was a real trouper though and managed to polish off the whole dish!
