Korean Street Food: A Quick Seoul-ful Tour

You should never be hungry in Seoul.

There are plenty of sit-down restaurants and convenience stores scattered all around the city, but the best local cuisine Seoul has seems to come from the street.

It's not that the restaurants are bad. It's just that street food is good!

 Those may look like french fries, but they're really corn dogs... covered in french fries! Why haven't I tried this yet? I only come across these when I'm full or planning to eat something specific soon. There are lots of fried goods found on the street.

 Meat on sticks is pretty common.  Sausages (including blood sausage) are readily available, as well as chicken.

 Here you can see more meat on a stick - I think that's yakitori-style grilled chicken - and fried mini dumplings.

Add donuts to the list of fried foods. These are Chinese style. I saw a lots of sellers on the walkway between the subway station and Seoul Grand Park selling donut twists.

Of course, tteokbokki (a spicy stew of sorts of fish cakes and other ingredients in a spicy sauce) is fantastic, but fish cakes are also served on skewers and cooked in a broth. The broth is quite good, too - when I ordered tteokbokki at the stand you see above, I got a free cup of broth as a "drink" and it's wonderful!

There are breakfast foods, seafood dishes, and plenty of other desserts. I already miss Korean street food and I've been back for only a couple months!

Korean Street Food: Breakfast in the Afternoon

What you see are the Korean street food version of pancakes. The batter is light and fluffy, and not too sweet. They aren't served with any kind of sauce or other flavoring, so you can just eat them.

The big one is my favorite, though. Sealed inside that layer of pancake is an entire egg. The cooking process solidifies it similar to a hard boiled egg, so it's not messy.

I've come across these just a few times, though I'm sure they're more common than that. It's called Egg Bread, unsurprisingly, or in Korean: Gyeran Bbang. I've read that they're more common in colder months, though the ones you see here were picked up in May on a fairly warm day. They run about 700 won (70 cents) each, or 3 for around 2000 won ($2). Prices vary, of course.

Korean Ballpark Food. One Word: Chicken.

I wanted to try a bunch of unique food while visiting Korea's baseball stadiums. Unfortunately, most of the offerings were pretty standard. One thing I noticed was the availability of instant ramen and plenty of hot water to make it. Most concession stands also sold drinks and simple snacks, but there wasn't very much along the lines of unique dishes.

Along the edges of stadium parking lots at several ballparks I found stalls selling freshly fried chicken. For $5, you got a decent meal, or for $10 a very filling meal complete with a beer.

The chicken is ripped into small pieces before being fried, and then served with a sweet chili sauce or salt. One seller provided the sauce and salt on the side for me to do with as I wanted, while another gave me a choice between the two - I went with the chili sauce and she sauteed the chicken briefly in a wok.

It's not terribly unique, but it's very delicious, especially when fresh, and certainly filling. I saw several attendees at the game eating their chicken as well.

I should note that you're generally permitted to bring in whatever food you'd like, similar to Japan. At least one stadium offered in-and-out privileges through at least one gate, which was right across the street from a convenience store. Prices inside the stadium weren't too high either.

When Western Food Gets Koreanized

One menu item I saw at several restaurants was a pork cutlet:

This is basically the same as southern fried steak or southern fried chicken from America, but with some pork instead. They covered it in mustard and a spicy sauce (a non-spicy version was available where I bought this meal), and served it with some veggies, salad, a potato wedge, rice, and a couple slices of the fruit I showed off yesterday. Plus, of course, the mostly-broth soup you see in the corner.

I don't think it's exactly healthy, and it was good but not something I'd want to eat very often. This particular dish came from E-World, an amusement park in Daegu, but as I said I saw it in several places. It might be on the menu of touristy places to appeal to foreigners; I'm not sure if Koreans actually eat it.

A "Full" Korean Meal from Seoul Zoo

Yesterday's bulgogi was about as authentic as it gets when it comes to street food, but Korean meals usually have several side dishes.

 I got quite hungry while exploring the Seoul Zoo, so after completing my first loop of the park (it takes two - an inner loop and an outer loop - to see all the exhibits) I stopped off at the restaurant nearest the front of the park.

This is bulgogi served over rice, and it's just like it sounds. There are more vegetables to this one, and it's topped with gim (seaweed) pieces. I'm not a big fan of gim, which is called nori here in Japan, but I ate it anyway. This dish had a lot more flavor than the street food, certainly due to the additional ingredients.

 Kimchi comes with pretty much any Korean meal you eat here, and at this restaurant there was a "kimchi bar" where you could just take as much as you'd like. Kimchi is usually pretty spicy, and that's certainly the major reason why I liked it. Some kimchi doesn't use the spicy peppers but is flavored with other sauces and juices, but it should always include garlic.

 These small slices of fruit were also free for the taking. I wasn't sure what to expect in terms of flavor so I took only a couple, but they turned out to be delicious!

A bowl of soup was the other dish provided with my meal, which was really just a broth with some small pieces of vegetables floating at the top. This was really good too, however.

This meal came with a total of four dishes, though up to a dozen or more dishes could be served in a full-course modern Korean meal. Traditionally, lower class households would have three dishes, while royal families would enjoy 12 choices.

It should be noted that usually, all of those side dishes are generally shared among family members or friends, in a family style take-what-you-want manner. I'd like to sit down at a traditional Korean restaurant and sample one of those giant offerings with dozens of side dish choices!

Meat from the Street: Authentic Bulgogi in Seoul, South Korea

I love spicy food, and for that reason alone, tteokbokki (and meat covered with the sauce used in tteokbokki )is my favorite Korean dish. But there are plenty of other great dishes in Korea, including the famous bulgogi.

Bulgogi is pretty simple to make, which makes it perfect as a street food. Sirloin or rib eye beef is thinly sliced and marinated in a bunch of sauces and spices for a few hours. Then, it's usually grilled with garlic, sliced onions, and chopped green peppers. I got the above dish of bulgogi at a street-side stand with sit-down picnic tables, located just outside the Seoul Folk Flea Market. It came with the bowl of cold soup you see below. Bulgogi literally translates as fire meat, but it's not spicy - none of the seasonings are spicy. The soup, on the other hand, had some red pepper that gave it a kick.

Bulgogi is so simple and non-exotic that it's the perfect primer for those interested in trying Korean food!

Move Over, Kimchi: Tteokbokki is my Favorite Korean Food.

 Does that look delicious? It may seem a bit dangerous - strange unknown round things in a thick red sauce. But I assure you - if you can take the heat - it's the best dish Korea has to offer.

Tteokbokki is mainly considered to be a snack food in Korea, made from chewy rice cake, fish cake, and a sweet chili sauce. Additional ingredients are added depending on the chef - the dish above was almost exclusively rice cake and chili sauce, plus the hard-boiled egg. Most commonly, I see it with chunks of different kinds of meat (usually sausage) and vegetables (usually of the green variety).

The round rice cakes (usually made of flour these days) are chewy and relatively flavorless, but the bulk of the dish. The other solid ingredients add a bit of additional flavor and texture, but the best part is the sauce. It is usually very spicy, and what makes the dish special.

It's easy to find all over Seoul as it's the most popular street food. It's also found in various other forms, such as on skewers. The spicy chicken I had on my first trip was covered with tteokbokki sauce, and in restaurants it can be found with cheese or fried pork cutlets. On the street, a fairly filling serving will run around 2500-4000 won ($2.50-$4.00) but some places sell it as cheap as 1000 won ($1).