KOREATOWN CHEAP EATS IN NEW YORK (+ Asian Sneaker Brand)

Are they trying to make soju healthy right now? Okay, okay, okay. You tell me what to do. You tell me how to eat it. $3.50 boba hat in K-Town. What's going on everybody? Welcome to the very first edition of Koreatown Cheap Eats here in New York City. Now, a lot of people come to K-Town, New York for a number of things. To party at the clubs, to do karaoke, to eat Korean barbecue. But today, we're going to show you how to do it on the cheap because there are a lot of great affordable street foods out here. But starting off, David, at our number one spot, of course, you've got to come here. If it's your first time in K-Town, this is Worry Jib. It is a place that powers the lunch crowd. It's also a place that powers the young party crowd. Yeah, man. It might feel like Hongdae on a Friday or Saturday night in here. Let's check it out. Worry Jib. All right, so we're inside of Worry Jib. As you can see, the lunch crowd is going crazy. This clearly is one of the spots that powers the lunch crowd in K-Town. So this is a great place to start. But first, we got to meet up with our friends, Sam and Adam, who actually started their very own sneaker brand. So let's meet them. What up? Is this your sneaker brand right here? Yes, sir. Nice. They're looking clean, man. Hopefully, you don't get any kimchi on them. All right, Sam. So I've been here before, but you are Korean. So you got to let us know, what are the steps? How should we go? What are the go-tos? Because I would say for a lot of people who aren't familiar, this is their very first time being in this atmosphere, right? Yeah. They make it really presentable, right? They show you exactly what it is. It's out here. It's not too much food. And so you get to kind of try a little bit of everything. So it depends. If you're coming here for lunchtime, some kimbap is, like, you know, real easy. You want to get a little bit more frisky. You know, you might be trying some of the tteokbokki, right? Like, get a little bit of that spice. But you also got to get the kimchi. And I love how they have it packaged here. Then you got the mung bean over here, right? And then you also got the cucumber. So you got all different kinds. Like, if you're not feeling the napa cabbage, then you get the kimchi. All right, all right. A lot of different types of kimchi out here at Wordy Gym. I do see that they're, you know, adding some new items. They got the mushroom kale. You got to get with the health grind, right? Yeah, exactly. All right, so we're in the soup section. Now, for lunchtime, would you get a different soup than you would get late at night with the soju and stuff like that? It depends, right? If it's wintertime, you always got to go with the sundubu, like, breakfast to night. But this, like, hangover soup, any one of these soups is going to be good for later. At what point do you go for the radish, the soybean radish, or the kimchi, you know, pork stew? So the soybean radish is a little bit more, like, maybe in the morning time. You might want to have that in the morning. But then, like, you might want the sundubu, right, at nighttime to make sure that you don't wake up with a hangover. Personally, I like to make sure that you either get the seafood in there or the pork. They got different types of rice. I think they have white rice, brown rice, and then they have the wild rice, which is, like, the purple, like, kind of black rice. Also, like, hemibab right now is, like, super popular. The brown rice, because it's supposed to be healthier. It's less fattening. That's popping with all the Korean moms right now. Right, and then Koreans, if they're all about the health and the skin and looking good and the modeling, you got to think about the brown rice. All right, Sam, we're here at the kimbap section. Can you tell us the significance of kimbap in a lunch diet? So kimbap's, like, super important, right? It's got all the ingredients. It's got rice. It's got vegetables. It's got meat. And it's a very quintessential Korean dish. So, like, you can have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But lunchtime is really when you have it. Like, it's so easy to eat. Kimbap is definitely one of the ways to go. And there's also different kinds of meats that you put in there, whether it's the sausage, right, or you can go with the spam. You can go with the chicken. All right, Sam, we are here at the iconic drink section. And I don't think it's War-Egypt without the drinks, right? So tell me the significance of all the different, you know, you have makgeolli, you have sojus, I mean, you have the baekseju. These are, like, the OG drinks, right? These are, like, the quintessential Korean-American alcoholic drinks. So, like, way back in the day, hundreds of years ago, you had all the men just drinking makgeolli, right? Like, that's what they're in the bowls. They're just, like, drinking and getting drunk with their boys. And then the soju came a little bit later when you were able to distill it, and the technology got better. So, like, that's where you have the soju. I've never had ginseng soju before. I've had some, like, rich people, like, some chaebol Korean soju. So are they trying to make soju healthy right now? I feel like, yeah, it's kind of like that. I don't know if you can fully, but I think this might be the balance. At least got some nutrients. And then you also got the makgu, right? You got the makgu, like, the Korean-American version of makgeolli, like, and that part of it's really cool. Shout out Carol. And what I love is, like, you know, the drinks are so cheap here. If you were to get this at the karaoke bar, you know, shout out to them, but they're going to mark it up, you know? So you get your drinks in pre-game here. So, man, that's exciting. That's why I love starting here at Worry Jib. We start the video here, and you start your night here. Oh my goodness, guys. This is actually my very first time being at Worry Jib for the lunch crowd. What are we looking at, Sam? That, to me, looks like the, that's kale, but, like, usually there's also a perilla leaf version. What else is very special that people should know? Obviously, they know the basics, but, like, unless you're Korean, like, this is like a if-you-know-you-know type thing. So this is, like, Korean-Chinese, right? So this is, like, every Korean kid's, like, favorite childhood dish. It's, it's so good, and, like... Man, I'm actually really excited about this because I love jajangmyeon. I just love that dish in general. With the jajangmyeon, like, when you have it with the radish kimchi, like, that's fire. Oh, okay, okay, okay. You tell me what to do. You tell me how to eat it. Do you mix and match? Because I've had jajangmyeon before. I didn't eat it with the radish before. Yo, I'm telling you, these pajeon, this was good. Yo, shout out to Worry Jib. This is all super affordable, guys. Prices vary per item, but I'm telling you, this is absolutely a cheap eat for the tier and the quality and the diversity of food you're getting. All right, so we're here with Adam and Sam. Tell us why you guys started the Sneaker Company. We think Asian American culture is amazing, and we want to celebrate it. All right, and you're celebrating it through sneakers. Yes, we are. Let's take a look at them. Don't, hey, man. 1587 right here. So 1587 was what is now known as the United States, like, the very first Asian immigrated and stepped foot in this country. Oh, nice, man. That's pretty cool. So it's built into the name. I mean, why, as, like, Asian Americans, you're Korean, you're Chinese, like, why did you guys want to start a sneaker brand? Well, for me, sneakers, I've loved them my entire life. I think as an Asian American, like, sneaker community is so inclusive, lets you be your authentic self. I think for Asian Americans, that's so freeing and amazing. So long, people have told us, your culture is not cool, you need to assimilate. Sneaker culture, you can be yourself. So that's why we want to really celebrate that. And the other thing, too, for me was being confident is, like, you don't have to explain yourself to anybody. You can just be who you are. And so with 1587, you get to walk around and be unapologetically Asian American without saying a damn word. I like it. So I guess, I mean, what are the Asian elements to the shoe? Because obviously it's a clean ass shoe just at the base level. But I guess, like, what makes it you guys? What makes it 1587? So we hired Asian American designers. Our favorite festival growing up was the Moon Festival. So we took traditional depictions of the moon and then put that design DNA in the shoe. So this is our first model, the AP87. It's a minimalist tennis silhouette. So this shoe is amazing because it works with every outfit and will elevate your outfit. Oh, definitely. I can see people wearing it with the suit look or you can wear it with the capris or almost like the joggers. This is the most versatile one. And you know what it is? I can already feel the leather is quality, man. These shoes were made in Italy and it uses the finest Italian leathers. And for the bottom, it uses all natural rubber. So these shoes will look amazing on the first wear or the 10,000th wear. Right, right, right. Because as they age, it'll take its own character, right? When you have quality leather, it wears in way different. We also have the Morro Bay. That's more of a 80s inspired basketball chunky shoe. Okay. Dope, dope. You guys, are these my size? No. Size 10. I think it's important for us to give back to the community and make sure that people know that like, hey, we're not just here to profiteer off this, right? Using the Asian American community and our identity as a way to enrich ourselves. But also we have to be giving back. The other part of it also is like, we're showing you that it's a different pathway. We're breaking the model minority myth here. Look, like we don't need to be doing the same thing that's linear of like being a doctor, lawyer, engineer. We can own a dope ass sneaker brand and not apologize for it and know for a fact with the confidence that we're gonna be successful. And our big thing is we wanna show everyone, for everyone who says Asian American culture isn't cool, that we're followers, you think that's bullshit. We can't wait to launch our shoes and show everyone how amazing our culture is and how powerful our community is. Yeah, that's dope, man. Where can they get the shoes at? 1587sneakers.com. 1587sneakers.com, man. Aren't you guys continuing on with Koreatown Cheap Eats? We're headed just right across the street to Food Gallery 32. It just goes to show you how dense it is. We're doing a food crawl and I'm walking 10 steps to the next spot. Aren't you guys, we just finished getting our items at Food Gallery 32. Sam, what are you working with right here? I got some kimchi bacon. Yeah, kimchi bacon. I got a sweet potato bun. I got dessert. Yeah, let's do it, man. Dude, I had no idea. It's actually pandemonium in there. That's really good. You got the kimchi bacon pile. I feel like this is a very Korean flavor. Yeah. Sweet potato on the inside. I like it a lot. Delicious. All right, you guys, continuing with our Cheap Koreatown Eats food crawl, we have landed at the iconic Gray Street Desserts, man. I know that this spot is really interesting because on a Friday or Saturday, you've kind of got your church crowd, but you've also got drunk people here eating pastries too. Yeah. You got both. So shout out to Gray Street, man. Multiple demographics that are balancing here. And you know what? This sort of brings us to our final point that we got here. It's like Asian movements, Pan-Asian movements. They got every drink here. We've got Vietnamese cafe souda. Obviously, we've got the Korean dalgona coffee. We've got matcha from Japan. We've got a Thai iced tea. And of course, we've got this Korean interpretation of Basque cheesecake, which if you guys know about Basque, that's like a region of Spain. So really, really dope shit going on right here. What are you going for, man? Should we give you the dalgona? Yeah, I want the dalgona for sure. How do we say it in Korean? Dalgona. What are you going for? We've got matcha, Thai beef. I didn't even know Basque existed until 10 seconds ago. I want the cheesecake. All right, you got the cheesecake. I need a little pick-me-up. I'm going to go with the cafe souda, the Viet one. All right, everybody, real quick. I'm crashing the party. I was waiting for my Pelicana chicken sandwich deluxe. Only $10 from Food Gallery 32. And I got this special torched marshmallow churro for five bucks. So, man, cheap eats. Street churro is actually a chain from Seoul, I believe, that has entered the U.S. market. Freshly fried, made-to-order Pelicana chicken sandwich. $10, made-to-order, super fresh. Whoa, street churro, s'mores, marshmallow torched on top. $5.50 over at Food Gallery 32. All right, Adam, you have been many years in the sneaker industry. You got some really cool stories, and you got a really interesting perspective. Why don't you share that with us, man? Asian Americans have been a huge part of the sneaker industry for the last 20 years, but we don't get any credit. So we're here to change all that. Why do you think that is? Obviously, even at a factory level, back in the 80s, Asians were there, right? The industry, probably on a design aspect, if you guys see the movies and stuff, it wasn't that Asian until probably the 90s, right? But it's been very Asian since the 90s, even on the back end, not just production, but even on the design side. Why do you think that Asians haven't fully got their due credit in that field? Asian American culture, the sneaker industry loves it, but they're so afraid of that word, Asian Americans. They're stuck, you know, 20 years ago, where they think Asian Americans aren't cool, they're nerds. They don't embrace the culture. So no more hiding behind the word street culture or rebranding it. Let's be loud and proud. A lot of things that are really popular in street culture, why do we have to hide behind another moniker? Let's just call it what it is. No, for sure, for sure. I feel that. All right, you guys, we're going to be continuing our cheap Koreatown food crawl through Koreatown, NYC. But that's a wrap for Sam and Adam, man. Thank you so much for showing us 1587. Thank you for coming through. Thank you, guys. And telling the story and making sneakers meaningful and high quality. Sometimes when you wear the Gucci shoes with the bumblebee on it, you just kind of have a feeling like that's not you. But you can get the quality here, you know, fraction of the price. Support the Asian American community. Let's go onwards. All right, everybody, continuing our cheap eats crawl through K-Town and the best deals in K-Town. Guys, I got comedian friend Christine, who's going to help us out for the rest of the video. Hi, I'm Christine Kim. Show is called Very Big Very Asian Comedy. We also have a festival taking place very soon at the end of April. But you also know how to eat in K-Town very cheap. You got some K-Town hacks. I do. I do have some hacks and we're going to share them today. We're going to hit up BBQ Chicken. They got some really good deals here. Let's go. All right, so if you're looking for a quick grab and go, BBQ Chicken is actually a really good place. They have the chicken out like this and they actually have a lot of like non-Korean flavors like this Jamaican rice bowl. They have the Cajun chicken rice bowl. I'm looking at getting the mala triangle kimbap and the Cajun triangle kimbap. What place does this have in K-Town? I mean, this is the go-to place. People love to go here or Pelicana. I'm sure those are the two like Korean brands on the street. This is obviously ready to go. You don't need to wait. All right, so for $2.99, you can get the triangle kimbaps aka the onigiris. Guys, BBQ Chicken got deals in there. Mala triangle kimbap. A little bit. A little bit of mala. It's not too strong. A little drip of hot pot in my mouth. Oh, perfect. Okay, so this is the Cajun one. A little bit of spice. Definitely flavor. Um, do you want to switch? Let's move on. Okay. All right, Christine, what's our next spot? All right, so we're in a food hall called Afternoon. It has mochi mochi donut. It has churro-style hot dog. I think they have bubble tea. Mochi mochi. Mochi mochi, yeah. So there's mochi mochi and mochi mochi. Yes. And those are completely separate businesses. Completely separate. You can get donuts and then you can get a drink. You can also get a little afternoon delight over here. I think it's clearly a cheap eat because there's a lot of young people here. You know, maybe they're getting off from school or even from work and they want a snack. The hot dog is huge. I mean, honestly, I don't eat the Korean hot dog a lot. But for like $7, you can get a fully loaded with crispy potatoes, mozzarella, a hot dog inside. How do you feel about it as a Korean person? What do you think about the K-hot dog? I mean, I think it's delicious. It's portable. It's definitely a guilty food because it's fried. It has cheese. It has hot dog and stuff like that. But obviously, kids love it. So... I mean, I think it's cool in K-town. Like, there is obviously some very expensive food that you can get. There's also a lot of cheap food. And you still get the K-vibe. It's all K-pop now. All right, Christine, as a Korean and also a K-town veteran, what is your hack here at BCD? Okay, so my hack here is... I come here for date night. And we order one of these entree combos. Monday through Friday. You can come during lunch or dinner. There's like a dollar difference. But you can order this one order and eat it between two people. And... But is it true that maybe they might like frown upon you for doing that? Or you think it's okay now? It's okay now. Okay, I haven't had a problem. I've done it a few times. They're okay. And the hack is obviously ordering extra banchan after you finish it. So finish the first round, ask for another one. Next, you want to go to probably three rounds of banchan. Yeah, for one order. You know what I mean? You want to be... So if you're sharing one combo, you think it's okay to order up to three refills of banchan. All right, guys, you got... That's Christine saying it. Christine Kim, comedian. Not a joke. BCD, still a good deal. Yeah, come eat. All right, Christine, our next cheap eat spot is Gamyeok. Now, it's not really a cheap eat spot. But why are we here? Why are we going to Gamyeok? All right, so we're going to Gamyeok because it's... Gamyeok? It's another date night spot. Over here, I usually order the dogan itang, which is like joints. It's hard to make at home. That's usually what I eat out. Things I don't cook at home. And then what's the hack though? Okay, so the hack is the kimchi here is pretty good, okay? And so you want to eat it... You said the best. Okay, I don't know. It used to be better. You just said the best. It used to be better when a specific grandma used to be around. I don't know if she's alive anymore. This is some deep cut K-town like knowledge. See, this is the stuff that I might know about Chinatown. I don't know this about K-town. The kimchi is really good. But they also can sell it to you by itself, right? Oh, I would have to... Yeah. But you're just saying eat as much kimchi here as possible. Yeah, I mean we have just the kimchi minimum. Plus like the extra kimchi juice on the side to dip the meat in. Yeah, are these like broke Korean date hacks? Yeah, I mean we are very resourceful. And we don't like to spend a lot of money on dates. All right, I gotta try this kimchi then. All right, so this is Dogan Itang. It's $19.99. And this is what you get. Yeah, so these are the joints. There's noodles in here. Oh, the phone bros. F-U-N-G. Oh, you see? Oh, okay, okay. Okay, okay. Thank you. You know your brother too, right? Yeah, yeah, you know? I remember, yeah. Have I been here? Or I met you... I was in the... Also in the YouTube. In the... Oh, okay. All right. Thank you. So this is the Dogan Itang. It's $19.99. This is what you get. You get the joints. Yeah, all tendon, baby. Yes, all tendon. Good for the knees. You get noodles, which is somyeon. Okay, so this is the kimchi that comes. It's a side dish, but they give it as an appetizer. It usually comes out first. And then you're waiting for the soup. And you said it's delicious. I'm gonna try this. This might be the best kimchi in K-Town. Or maybe the best kimchi I've had. Because I'm not like a kimchi. I will say the radish is better. That's pretty good. Pretty good, right? Way better than anything I've had out of the can. Wow, all right. We asked for extra radish kimchi juice, right? Because what we do with it is... As you can see, I've taken the noodles out of here. Out of the soup. Okay. So you take this. You put it in here. Who taught you how to do this? Is this like an old man trick or like a... Yeah, so this is actually my partner, my husband. He eats it like this. This is a very like middle-aged Korean man type of way to eat it. So you're getting the real stuff here, okay? But you eat it like this. And it's kind of like, you know, you've had bibim guksu before, right? It's kind of like that. So you put it in another dish. Here, you can have... Wow, a completely different flavor. Yeah, pretty good, right? That's really good. Yeah. I like it. All right, guys. $19.99. Split it between two people. You get some of the best kimchi in the game. And then you get these joints. What do you guys call this one? This is like the sweet vinegar. Yeah, I think there's probably vinegar and soy sauce. Maybe sesame oil in there. Gamyeok, guys. Gamyeok, gamyeok. Gamyeok, $19.99. Split between two people, $10 each. And you can get refills of this? Yeah, and you know, this is the thing that you're supposed to eat after going to like a Korean spa, right? To like nourish your body again. Oh, and also for the skin and the collagen. Yeah, so if you don't have lotion, come eat this soup, okay? Gamyeok. All right, our next location is H Mart. And obviously, it's a grocery store. I love H Mart. But Christine, you have a very, very specific boba H Mart hack that I'm interested to see. So let's go inside. So you're going after the Taiwanese grass jelly drink, okay? But specifically the lychee flavor. All right, she's going to tell you why in a second. This is Christine's $3.50 boba hack in K-Town. All right, so you got the Taiwanese grass jelly drink. I actually have a Taiwanese earl grey milk drink, okay? Then we got a cup from Paris Baguette. We just, you just took this cup. Anyways. It was free. You can ask for anything. Go for it. Okay. So you were saying that you like to drink this grass jelly drink by itself and it gives you some boba vibes? Yeah, so you need a straw. You can ask for a straw. And this is specifically the lychee flavor. So it kind of might taste like a lychee grass jelly boba. Exactly. It kind of like mimics like bubbles, you know, like a tiny version. I think grass jelly is healthier. I think it's healthier than the cassava root tapioca pearls, yeah. Okay, but now we're going to make it real milk tea. Okay. So this was $2. Okay, so you're going to add some of this. Tastes pretty good. It kind of tastes like Cocos. And the total cost was $3.50. $1.99 plus $1.50. I'm convinced, Christine. Save money, guys. All right. Finishing up our cheap eats slash hacks of K-Town. Christine, we're out here on 35th. We're outside of one of your favorite restaurants. My favorite restaurants, yeah. They actually have this dish, which is dukkae jjambbuk, which is specific to here. A lot of people like to eat it here. It's kind of like what you eat with older Korean parents type of people. All right. So, I mean, I've never had the perilla seed stew. I would eat it right now. They happen to be closed at this moment. But they also have this really interesting tofu ice cream. Sorry, guys. I wish I could show you the real thing. But they're closed until 5 because they need rest. I actually want to try this spot now that I know that there are actually a little strip of K-Town outside of K-Town. It's kind of nice. And it's right next to a duet. I don't know if you've been there. That's a karaoke place. They have a karaoke marathon on Sundays. So you can pack food, have a picnic there. It's the K-Town outside of K-Town. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for watching the Cheap Eats in K-Town. Shout out to Christine for showing me a lot of your hacks. That was really informative. I hope it helps some people out there that are maybe thinking about moving to New York City or whatever. But anyways, guys, thank you so much for watching. Until next time, we out. Peace.