MASSIVE PANCAKE! Chinese STREET FOOD in Seoul CHINATOWN Tour

This will be my dinner or it could be my blanket. One of those two. I'm taking this baby home. Hi, good morning. Welcome to Chinatown. Well, it's not the official Chinatown of Seoul. That's over by Incheon. But make no mistake, this is the real Chinatown of Seoul. This is Daeram and if you take a look around, you're going to see something different. There's mainly Chinese characters everywhere and Chinese businesses like hot pots and Chinese supermarkets. And if you listen, people here are going to speak more Mandarin than they would Korean. But anyway, I'm really excited to be here because I miss Chinese food all the time. Let's go eat some stuff. I got a couple of food items here. This is called a mahua. I haven't had this in years. This is a very, very popular Chinese food item, especially in the north. And it's basically like a Chinese pretzel. You can see, look, it's like a braid, right? I used to eat this when I was a kid. I really haven't seen this in so long. It's one of my favorite things, especially we eat it with something called youcha, which is like an oil tea soup kind of deal. And you would take this and you would dip it. This thing kind of unbraids itself. Look at that. Wow. Seriously, all the years after I left China, my first time having this would be in South Korea. Oh, it's so good. Slightly crispy outside, a hint of sweetness inside. It's just all airy, fluffy bread. Perfect for any type of soup. Oh, this is so good. They nailed it too. That is perfect. Also, had to get a bun. That place, classic Chinese food, absolutely nailed it. This pork bun is amazing. Meaty and juicy. They put a little peppercorn in here to get that little peppery flavor. All that juice is soaked into that perfectly fluffy bun. This is ridiculous. Only thing I'm missing right now, hot oil, vinegar, and a bowl of soup. I have actually never seen this dish before. She made this with like a couple sheets of flat noodles, onions, scallions, cilantro, little bits of hot dog. This looks bloody amazingly delicious. I mean, this whole thing is just covered in chilies. There's a fried egg in this thing as well. Oh my god. I love this. I don't know whether this is a Chinese dish or a Northeastern dish or some kind of Chinese-Korean hybrid dish, but I don't care. This could be the child of Dr. Frankenstein and I would love it to death. The little noodles have so much, as the Chinese would say, chewiness to it. Such a great mouthfeel and a chewy texture. Every single thing here I love, from the egg, to the little bitty hot dogs, to the sauce, which is a little sour. The sauce definitely has a lot of Chinese vinegar. The little garnishes and onions gives it a nice crunch. I absolutely love this. One of the most unique noodle dishes I've had here. Get your butt here and try this out. So far, three for three. Everything I had in this Chinatown has been beyond delicious. All right, I'm gonna finish up and see what else we can find. They got their soup dumplings and they actually have a difference between soup dumplings and a xiaolongbao. Look at the soup. It's like a little dumpling volcano ready to erupt. Look how pretty that is. You just want to like kiss this thing. That is a perfectly kissable, lovable little soup dumpling. Let's see what's in here. Already took a sip of the soup from the top. Oh, look at all the soup that's inside. This one's kind of a sacrificial dumpling because I want to know how much soup is in there. The answer, quite a bit. Super meaty dumpling. The skin is actually pretty thin looking. The hot oil and the broken up dumpling kind of looks like a homicided dumpling crime scene. Wow, that's great. Now I want one in its full juicy glory. I'm gonna one bite this baby. Skin, over there. Tons of juice inside. Extremely, extremely meaty. This is delicious. The filling is just out of this world. Massive, meaty, fatty. Flavored extremely well, especially with a touch of vinegar and a splash of hot oil. When you take a bite, prepare yourself for a porky explosion. Don't be like me. Don't, don't, don't talk with this thing in your mouth because you might splash your neighbor. Oh, I love this area. There's only been, I haven't made it one block yet. I've just been continuously distracted because there's food everywhere. I'm gonna keep exploring. I might have to come back here. I might have to spend a second day here. So walking around, the Chinese food here seems to be predominantly northeastern Chinese food, which makes sense because northeastern China borders Korea. A lot of dumplings, a lot of dough. What is this? Check this out. This is what I call a massive pancake. This will be my dinner or it could be my blanket. One of those two. I'm taking this baby home. A little less fun when it's cut into slices, right? Still, like, this looks like a slice of Manhattan pizza. Crispy, flaky. This is great because you can just take it home and freeze it. You got stuff to eat for the next two years. Oh, roasted sunflower seeds. I haven't seen this forever. Had to get another bun. Fresh pork buns, three for one dollar. Oh, that's why I found a great delicious deal. Laugh. Piping hot, fresh pork buns. Three for a dollar. I'm moving here to this neighborhood. Just a little hot oil would be fly. Also, got a little tea egg. If you've never had a tea egg before, it's like the ultimate of all eggs. Huge umami flavor, especially the yolk. I love that so much. I had no idea I could be this happy when I woke up this morning. Oh, man. Completely unexpected. I didn't know how much stuff there's going to be here and how great almost everything I tried was. Unfortunately, I have to go meet a friend for dinner, but I'll be back tomorrow. A lot more to see and I haven't got started on the noodles yet. Tons of noodles here. I'll be back. Chinatown, I am back. It's raining. Oh, it's raining so hard. Oh, my God. Okay, this is... Chinatown, I am back. Much better. I mean, I do like rain, but my camera sure does not. This place is way more crowded than when I was here on Friday. Oh, it smells so good. Like I told you guys, this Chinatown is mainly northeastern Chinese food, which involves a lot of flour-based like buns and dumplings and noodles. And also, it's a very, very meaty part of China. A lot of root vegetables, a lot of lamb, a lot of beef. So I got a lamb soup because on a cold day like this, lamb soup is going to feel really, really good. Also, I got a beef noodle soup because freshly made noodles is a specialty in northeast China. I got to give that a try. All right. I forgot. This is Korea. Sometimes when you get meat soup in Korea, they don't put any salt inside. It lets you salt it yourself, which I find kind of, kind of weird, but a little pepper, chilies, salt. I'm getting there. Way more salt. Oh, yeah. Now that great lamb flavor shines through even better. It just warms your whole body up. It's really smooth, almost creamy lamb soup. There's a lot of lamb innards inside. Intestines, liver, stomach. And when you bite into that intestine, the song, Play That Funky Music, comes to mind because there'll be some funk in here. But not horrible. Overall, this is delicious. Just a great light, meaty soup. I especially like the kidney in the stomach. I like a little organic flavor. That is great. I gotta try these noodles. Freshly handmade noodles. The guy's making it outside. Wow, this is delicious. Heck yeah, baby. Wow, this place is awesome. Come here and get some lamb soup and get some beef noodles. Satisfaction guaranteed. The noodles soak up the flavor really, really well. Ingredients wise, this is pretty simple. It's beef broth, little scallions, a little meat. The combination of the chewy texture and the flavor of the noodle is just intense. Let's do more chilies and Chinese vinegar. This place just smells like how I remember a noodle shop in China would smell. Just filled with that great lamb and beef aroma. Oh, this is fantastic. A little white pepper. So glad I got these two dishes. Again, when I was trying to order, I was mocked by the people working here. They're like, you can't order those two at the same time. They're both soup dishes. And I'm like, let me order what I want, please. Chase it with a little pickled vegetables. Again, you can tell this is hand pulled because the noodle shapes and textures are different. And that's where all that great mouth feel and chewiness comes from. This is truly authentic Chinese beef noodle soup. I mean, for those of you who've had Taiwanese noodle soup, the noodle soup in mainland China is completely different. The broth is not going to be as heavy and as thick. It's going to have more of an aroma to it. And the flavor is really unlike anything else you will ever have. Oh, this makes me so homesick. It's a rule in China. If you're eating either lamb soup or beef soup, if you're not sweating with snot running down your nose, crying a little bit after you're done with it, you didn't have a good enough experience. And from the taste to all this, this is as authentic as you can get. The guy beside me, yeah, this guy right here, this guy uses about 50 napkins to wipe the sweat and snot and tears off his face. I mean, he had an authentic experience as well. These guys make their own mochi. So one is red bean, one is another like a string bean grind, something like that. I have to try it. Freshly pounded mochi. Oh, that texture is so good. Soft and chewy, not overly sweet. My mochi is as fresh as they come. The white one does taste like a soybean powder. Buy some of this stuff, take it home, toss it in with some ice cream. Oh yeah. All right. One last thing I got to eat. There's these skewer shops all over this area. And another very, very popular food item in the Northeastern China is skewers. Actually, it's popular all over China. And here you get a grill yourself. This was one of my favorite things to eat growing up in China. Like, I remember going to the night market. Back then the skewers was not, there wasn't like actual skewers. So people took like bicycle spokes and they made those into skewers. And this would sell for about 20 Chinese cents per skewer. And me and my friends would go and literally order hundreds of them. And here, what they do is they created this little mechanism. So you put your skewers here and it just rotates for you. It's super cheap too, because here it's a dollar a skewer. And this is fresh. If you go to Chinatown in the U.S., this is going to be about $1.50 per skewer. And it's not going to be as fresh as this, because sometimes they precook the meat. This little guy needs some help. And the seasoning is typically a combination of cumin, chili peppers, salt, and sesame. And you can just go ahead and spray this on. And once the cumin hits the charcoal, it gets a little smoky and the aroma is absolutely intoxicating. And this is so fun because you can hear the sizzle of the lamb. And this is best when you're cooking lamb. Whenever the lamb fat just drips onto the coal, it creates this like little smoke and little flame. And the aroma just punches you in the face. When this is being cooked in China, you can smell it two blocks away. So imagine how great this is sitting right next to it. And when they're cooked, you can just move the cooked ones up here so they stay warm. And when they're chilling up there, just throwing a little more spices their way. Oh yeah. When it comes to these skewers, you always got to get lamb because the fat is very necessary. There's nothing in the world like a crispy piece of fat. And lamb is the only skewer where you can have enough fat. You can afford to cook this a little longer and the meat stays juicy. This is such a cool experience for me coming to this Chinatown because out of a lot of the Chinatowns I've been to, not many are specifically very northern Chinese. Most Chinatowns in the world, there are more Cantonese people, maybe Wenzhou people, Fujianese people. And this one is almost entirely focused on northeastern Chinese food, which is one of the greatest cuisines in China. There's a lot of meat, a lot of dumplings, a lot of potatoes. This whole area and all this stuff I've had is pure comfort food for me. And it's a feeling and flavor I don't even get in New York. For those reasons, this has been one of my favorite Chinatown experiences in the world. Oh, that was one solid piece of crispy fat. Hey, if you know, you know. That was the best part. This has been an amazing couple of food days in this Chinatown. I can't express how much I enjoyed everything. I'm gonna do my best to list all the places I went to in the comments below. It's a little difficult because everything is in Korean. I may need to enlist a Korean friend of mine to help find the locations. But guys, check out the places. I love the noodle soup. I love the dumplings. I love the mahua. I love this. Basically, everything I had in this Chinatown exceeded all my expectations. This feels like home to me. If I lived in Seoul, I would be here all the freaking time. As always, thank you all so much for watching. Until we eat again, see you later.