- [Narrator] Yellow Productions presents:
The top four best food markets in Seoul, Korea
for Korean street food.
- [Host ] Certainly, the most photogenic of
all the traditional Korean markets in Seoul
is the Gwangjang traditional market.
It's got these flags overhead, but what you come here for
it's the mungbean pancake.
This pancake. Actually, they're making it right behind me.
You can see the mung beans are grinding and then they're
kind of like frying them up on this thing.
You'll find twenty, thirty vendors that all sell this
to poke, dumplings...
You would think walking around this market,
that there's maybe only five foods in all of Korea
because that's what represented here.
And it's interesting combination of food, a food stall
and then a shoe stall, and then a food stall,
and a shoe stall.
You'll find some clothing stalls off the side
but hey, that's enough about that.
Let's dive into this mung bean pancake.
It's kind of like a Korean seafood pancake
except it's only made with mung bean.
It's fried and warm...
And crunchy...
Less vegetables than a traditional seafood pancake.
And...
Then they give you some onions on the side
to cleanse your palate between bites.
One of the nice things about this market too
is most of the stalls have seats so you can sit down
and in the winter the seats are actually heated.
They've got plugs underneath that'll keep them warm.
It's also great on a rainy day because
the whole place is covered.
If you're feeling a bit more adventuresome,
and by a bit I mean a lot more adventuresome,
something you'll find in a lot of these vendors
that I haven't seen in a lot of the other markets
that I've done in this video is live octopus.
There's a lot of these vendors they've got these tanks
that's have live octopus in them.
When you order it, they cut it up, serve it on a plate
and cause the octopus was just killed it's still
moving around on the plate and actually
when you pick it up on chopsticks, it still moves,
and when you eat it, it kind of like...
People describe it as grabbing onto your throat
as it goes down.
I will caution you that people have died actually
from eating that because it's stuck on their throat
and closes it up. So that's why I say
only if you're really adventuresome.
If you're slightly less adventuresome,
you can have one of the Korean nation dishes.
Bibimbap places like this has all the ingredients
for it laid out. Looks pretty picturesque.
And I'm...
Probably going to stick with the bibimbap.
Or maybe the mandu and the dumplings.
Those look pretty tasty and safe,
And they don't move, and that's usually one of my
requirements for food: is that it doesn't move
when I'm eating it.
If you want something more spicy, well this stall's
got a lot of spicy. It's all red.
And they'll vacuum package it
for you to take home overseas.
If you're looking for kimchi, this stall just sells kimchi.
And you can see the vendor washing the cabbage
to make in the kimchi.
That is a lot of cabbage.
The best time to come to the Gwangjang market is
on a weekday during lunchtime.
That's when you'll find it to be busiest,
therefore the food will be the freshest.
The rest of the market outside the food zone sells
mostly textiles.
You can get textiles for making a suit.
Actually, it's very popular in Korea to come and get a suit
made. There's a lot of custom made tailor shops here.
But if I was going to get anything custom made in Korea
it wouldn't be a suit, it would be a Hanbok,
the Korean traditional attire.
Now that would be a souvenir to bring back.
One of the quintessential night market neighborhoods
in Seoul is Myeongdong and in Myeongdong there's all these
street vendors, I mean some are semi-permanent,
some are street stalls, but a quintessential
Korean food to get from a street vendor
is Topokki.
So they've got it right here.
3000 won, I got my money ready. Let's go get it.
Hello, Topokki please.
3000 won right here. They give you these
little sticks to eat it from.
It's a rice cake in a spicy red sauce.
Let's check this out.
It's hot.
And even some drinks too.
It's hot. It's like a hot soup.
Oh, it's too hot to drink.
But this this is pretty good.
Check out the Toppoki when you're in Seoul.
So after just having a serving of Toppoki
and my nose is red, probably from the sauce still on it.
It's running and so spicy, I can't eat anymore
so only get that if you like really extremely spicy things.
And the soup that comes with it is extra hot.
Make sure you have something to drink because
you're going to need...
some cold drinks so you can actually get through it.
My tea was not sufficient, I was still thirsty.
What's the best thing to kind of loosen up that spice?
How about some orange juice?
This stall sells fresh squeezed orange juice.
4000 won and it comes in a cute little bag.
It reminds me of a Capri-Sun.
And they add ice to it too so that it...
It's nice and cold and refreshing.
Though, it's not really a Florida orange,
it's a little on the sour side,
but that's good to counteract that spice.
If orange juice isn't your thing,
well there's other juices:
there's pomegranate juice, I found grape juice,
and there's even fruit carts too with watermelon, kiwi,
pineapple, and...
Cantaloupe!
So if you wanna way to wash down that spicy Toppoki,
you can get some spicy...
fishcake...
on a really...
Big...
stick.
It's really hot. That's a really big stick,
you can't see the whole thing.
I guess you kind of have to...
You don't eat this the other way or else it'll all drip.
You kind of have to eat this this way from the bottom up.
It's spicy. I've been having an interesting dialogue
with who runs the camera on this about it being sweet too.
And actually...
It's kind of sweet, if you can get past the spice.
I couldn't with the first few things I ate,
but I can actually taste a little bit of sweet in there.
Something a little less spicy this time.
Mandu. Giant mandu. Three giant mandus,
cut into three pieces each.
4000 won, about four U.S. dollars.
They put the soy sauce, a little bit of vinegar on top,
and give you a stick to eat it with.
Almost everything at these Korean night markets is
served with a stick.
Let's go ahead and dive into the mandu.
See how it is.
It's good. It's freshly fried. I love the pork.
Pork and veggies. Good interplay in there.
And some of these Korean glass noodles.
Which makes this a fairly unique
to just a Chinese pot sticker.
Another quintessential dessert to get at the
Seoul night markets, particularly at the Myeongdong
is the rose shaped ice cream.
It's actually gelato and I took a few pictures
so it's kind of melting
Today it's 3800 won, about four U.S. dollars.
It looks like a rose, it's too beautiful to eat!
Well, almost because it'll melt if I don't eat it so...
Vanilla, vanilla yogurt...
Strawberry gelato.
It's actually really good strawberry.
Tastes like real strawberry.
I like it.
This stall sells chicken feet with cheese.
On the chicken feet, they don't just grill it,
but they blowtorch it to make sure that cheese is melted.
And if you want desert, right next door
is a stall selling Oreo churros.
You think we're in Mexico, but yes, churros in South Korea.
Another good neighborhood for street food in Seoul is
Dongdaemun, in front of the Dongdaemun design plaza,
in front of all these big department stores.
These places are open until five in the morning on weekends.
It's pretty crazy, but here you'll find stalls selling
all manner of tasty street foods.
This one sells...
chicken on a stick.
And this is the chicken on a stick with cheese.
Let's check it out.
Lot's of mayo.
And like a Parmesan cheese.
And some onions.
And if you want to see what it looks like
when they're cooking it, just over here right there.
It's like Korean barbecue, out on the street.
Pretty neat.
So the verdict on the chicken cheese kebob...
I mean, it's tasty, but I'm still kind of
waiting for the cheese.
I mean, I mentioned it earlier when I'm like,
'it tastes like mayo', and thinking about it
it's mostly mayo with a little sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.
Maybe as an American I'm expecting like nacho cheese sauce
or something. That'd be pretty good.
Kebob food stand, if you're watching this,
get some nacho cheese sauce.
One of the best food markets in Seoul is Namdaemon market.
This market, it's named after
the Great South Gate that it's right next to.
It is Seoul's oldest and largest market.
There's more than just food here, there's shops,
food, everything under this
I mean, I can't even begin to describe the mass of stuff
that you can buy here, but this video is all about food
so there's pretty much three main food streets
that we're going to walk through.
Let's check them out.
If you're craving for some noodles,
head down the chopped noodle street.
This street right here.
It's this little alley and there's all these little
noodle vendors that are on it.
And what do they sell? They sell noodles.
What do they sell more of? They sell more noodles.
You can get the chopped kind of wheat-ish noodles,
you can get the cold buckwheat noodles.
We got one of each. It was pretty tasty.
You sit down, you see them make it right in front of you.
You sit in front of the kimchi. It wasn't overly spicy.
And it's pretty cheap like the noodle soup is 5500 won,
which is about the equivalent of five U.S. dollars.
And you'll be beckoned to sit at one of these restaurants.
Which one do you pick?
Well it's up to you because they serve pretty similar things
we picked the one that had the most people
and it was a pretty good choice.
By the way, enjoy the kimchi.
Spicy and pretty sour at the same time.
Another really interesting alley in this market
is fish stew alley. It's an alley that is full
of restaurants selling fish stew.
Their kitchens are really open,
they're open to just the open air as you walk down it,
you'll see fish stew cooking up on the side.
It's extra hot in here because the stoves are just
open to the alley.
And if you want to see what the restaurants look like
just take a look over that way,
you'll see that there's whole bunch of people
enjoying their fish stews.
The third and final food street at this market is
uncreatively named food street, or food alley.
It's this one right here.
What does this one serve? Food.
What does it sell more of? Food, food, and food.
Of course, you'll find the fish stew that we saw before.
But this one's got a lot of food laid out
so you can see exactly what you're going to order.
Typically under saran wrap so you've got examples of it.
And this stall over here, we're gonna,
we're gonna swing around...
Oh, that guy who just walked by me, by the way,
he was doing food delivery.
You see a lot of food delivery people.
Here's an example of one of the stalls on food street.
This one is right at the beginning.
It sells meat on sticks, most of these are hot dogs.
This one is a hot dog wrapped in fishcake.
Very Korean.
Well, if you enjoyed this video, you might enjoy
watching some other videos from
our series on Seoul, South Korea.
You can click either of them to watch,
or find links in the description below.
Well, we won't say goodbye,
because we'll see you in the next video.
- [Bear] See you soon!