Eating Traditional Korean Street Food in Seoul. What to try at Gwangjang Market

***Welcome to our Korean Street Food Tour!***

We're in Seoul, South Korea for the first time and eating Korean street food. We're headed to one of the most popular (and oldest) markets in all Seoul called Gwangjang Market. While at the market we’ll be trying a bunch of traditional and typical Korean street food dishes including Bindae-tteok (Mung Bean Pancake), Tteokbokki (Spicy Rice Cakes), Korean Fried Chicken, Kal-guksu (knife-cut noodle soup), Mandu (Dumplings), Hodo Kwaja (walnut cake) and Honey Hotteok (pancake).

We’ve been spending a few days in the massive city of Seoul and we are completely blown away. Today we're going to be diving into Korean street food. We’ve made our way over to a local market to see how much food we can eat. We've come to Gwangjang Market, probably one of the most famous markets here in Seoul. We've tried some Korean food here and there, especially over the last couple of years, so we’re a little bit familiar with it but we still have a lot to learn! However, this is our first time trying Korean street food.

Bindae-tteok

We found the first thing we want to try today, and we can see them frying it up right in front of us. We are trying some golden crispy pancakes. It is called Bindae-tteok in Korean. So we're watching other people around us and they seem to be kind of cutting it, so we can see all the steam coming out. We use chopsticks not our hands. We think scallions and maybe bean sprouts are in here. It's a little bit crunchy on the outside because it is fried in that oil. Not the healthiest, but delicious. It reminds us a bit of a potato pancake, but we don't think there is a potato in there.

Tteokbokki

The next thing we're going to try is these little rice cakes, which are very well known here in Korea. The rice cakes are covered in a red sauce. After tasting, we find that they are a little spicy. The Tteokbokki (Spicy Rice Cakes) is really chewy and very dense. But we like the red pepper sauce on top of these. But there's one thing we are not a huge fan of anchovy sauce in here as well. We're not always huge seafood/fish lovers. This is one of those tastes where we find it's a little bit too fishy. So probably not going to be our favourite of the day.

KFC - Korean Fried Chicken

We found another booth here that has a very famous Korean dish. This is Korean fried chicken (KFC). It's a common thing here to get fried chicken and beer here in Korea. We skip the beer, although it is an option at this kiosk as well. This chicken is a little bit different than what we tried in the past few days here in Seoul. This is boneless and it's covered in a sweet garlic sauce. It's sticky, almost like it's made with honey or something similar. The garlic itself is kind of crunchy. I think they fry it in some oil to get that crunchy consistency to it. It's nice because the chicken itself has the crunchiness from the batter and then also the crunchiness of the garlic. It's super garlicky. If you're on a first date or going to meet a group of people, maybe not the best option!

Kal-guksu

One of the most popular dishes to try at this market is knife-cut noodles and dumplings. One of these kiosks was featured on a Street food Asia on Netflix and there is always a huge lineup because of it. We just hopped over to another similar stall here and where there are dumplings and some soups. Be aware, when you sit down at these places, they want you to order one dish per person, you aren’t able to split a dish between two. We ended up ordering soup and dumplings. The soupl has both knife-cut noodles (Kal-guksu) in there and some dumplings. The noodles are freshly hand-cut. The noodles are just exceptional. Also, the mixture of the broth is so fresh. There's also seaweed on the top and there's some onions in there, too. It's like a gourmet chicken noodle soup. We ordered two types of dumplings (Mandu), one is kimchi, and the other is pork. The dumplings are simple but delicious, there is just pork and scallion in there. Also, some dipping sauce there that we feel goes well with the dumplings.

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Honey Hotteok (honey pancake)

We’ve moved on to something a little sweeter, a Korean honey pancake. It's called Honey Hotteok. We previously had a Savory pancake and now we've moved on to a sweet one. They seem to like their pancakes here in Korea. The first taste was really good. Not overly sweet, it is just slightly honey-flavoured. This might be our favourite thing today. It reminds us a little of a Beavertail in Canada. This is a different take on it, but there are similarities to all the cinnamon and all the sugar. The dough is nice and hot and then you can see trickles of honey.