Korean Street Food - Gwangjang Market Street Food PART 2 | SPICY Korean Food in Seoul South Korea

What's up and welcome to another episode of Chopstick Travel. My name's Luke Martin and today is our last day here in Seoul. The city is incredible and packed with so much good food. If you didn't check out yesterday's episode, hit the link down in the description box. We explored one of the lesser known fish markets here in Seoul called the Mapo Fish Market. All right guys, our crab has arrived. Our Korean snow crab. It looks even bigger when it's on this plate like this. Just check that out. That stringy, delicious white crab meat. Oh man. As per tradition, we are here at the Gwangjang Market for breakfast today. Every time I come to Seoul, I always make sure to make it a point to stop here and have some delicious Korean street food. So we're going to show you around the Gwangjang Market, but we have a full day here in Seoul to do lots of eating. So make sure you stay tuned. It's going to be a good day. So let's go check out the Gwangjang Market. So the Gwangjang Market is this absolute massive building that is filled with all sorts of different goods. There's sort of like a textiles area. There's all kinds of pickles and fresh fruit and veg, fresh seafood, but also there's lots of ready-to-eat street foods. We always come here every time we come to Seoul because the food is really good even though the market's quite touristy. We showed you the Mangwon Market a couple episodes ago, which is a nice alternative if you want something a little bit more local. But definitely still check out the Gwangjang Market because there is a lot of good food. So we're going to find a stall, sit down, and start eating. A lot of the stalls here at the Gwangjang Market are serving pretty much the same variety of the typical Korean street food. So you can pick pretty much any one and sit down. And we just ordered up three of the classic dishes, some of our favorites. So let me introduce them. The first off is the japchae, which is the Korean potato starch glass noodles, the selfie noodles with a little bit of sesame oil drizzled on top, some greens, and some carrots. And then next up we've got the mandu, which are Korean-style dumplings. This one's just pork with chives and then this one is kimchi and then served with a little bit of a sauce there. And then the tteokbokki, which is the spicy, super spicy-looking Korean rice cake. Let me actually just grab one of these right now. These look too good. I want to try this out. Let's try that. It's so chewy. Those are actually quite spicy and they have a little bit of a sweetness to them, but really it's all about the texture. They're like a really, really chewy, thick noodle. So let's try out these mandu next. I'm going to go in for one of the kimchi kind. Those are my favorite and I love how they're kind of wrapped up like a little ring almost. Dip it in this soy sauce and grab some of these green onions. Let's try that. The wrapper is so thin. The kimchi is still got a little bit of a crisp bite to it in there. A little bit of a sourness too from that fermented kimchi. It's also kind of got like a cheesiness to it mixed with that kimchi and that wrapper and then the saltiness from that soy sauce. That is like seriously a really delicious little bite. One of my favorite things at the whole Gwangjang market, the kimchi mandu. Let's try these japchae next. Grab some of these. Let's try that. Oh, sesame oil. Really strong sesame oil flavor. They're super slippery and they're really soft noodles too and then a little bit of a crunch from the carrot in there. These are three of my favorite all-time favorite Korean street foods here at the Gwangjang market. So the vendor actually gave us a little bit of odeng fish broth, fish cake broth. So what you can do is take a little bit of japchae noodles and dip it right in there to the broth to add a little bit of extra flavor. Probably my favorite thing about the Gwangjang market is sitting bar side and being able to watch the vendors prepare the dishes for you. We ordered up, like I said, three of the most popular. Another really popular one is the mayak kimbap. We tried that at the Mangwon market so we wanted to have something different today at the Gwangjang market. They also serve soondae, which is Korean blood sausage. All kinds of different noodles. You can get bibimbap here. You can get seafood. You can get some intestines. All kinds of different things. Anything you could ever imagine Korean street food wise, it is here at the Gwangjang market. We're finished off with our meal. Gonna take a little bit of a walk through the market. Just check out the rest of the sights and that'll be it for the Gwangjang market this morning. So we were on our way out of the Gwangjang market. We spotted a stall that was pretty popular serving some sort of a dessert that we have never tried before. So we have it here. It is a adzuki red bean rice porridge. So you can see that red bean broth. It's really really thick. And then you can see all that rice in there too. And then there's some little chewy balls in there. I'm not exactly sure what they made it of. Maybe tapioca. I'm not exactly sure. Let me know if you know down in the comment box. So let me get some of this. I'm just gonna try the broth and the rice by itself and it's steaming hot. It's not nearly as sweet as I thought it was going to be. It's actually a lot more savory than I imagined. I think I'm supposed to put sugar in it. You can do that. Inside here? Yeah. Okay. I'm just seeing now there is some sugar on the table. So I'm imagining I gotta put this in. I'm gonna grab quite a decent amount of sugar here. Put that in and mix that up a little bit. And I think that is what makes it into more of a dessert. You can adjust the sweetness to your preference. So let me try that now. I'm gonna grab one of those chewy balls too. Oh wow. That ball just completely disintegrated in my mouth. It definitely tastes a little bit better with the sweetness. It's not so bland. Definitely add a little bit of sugar. But this is an interesting and super comforting warming dessert. Finish off the Gwangjang Market. This place has a spot in my heart. I really love it. It is such an amazing place to come to in Seoul if you want to taste some real authentic food. And it's really easy for tourists and foreigners. The signage is mostly in English and prices are a little bit more expensive. But the food is legit and it's really easy just to pick a stall, sit down. All the ajumma, the aunties, are really really friendly. So make sure you check it out if you're ever in Korea. Right now we are going to head to a hanok village. So let's go. So the famous hanok village here in Seoul is called the Bukchon Hanok Village. This is not that one. We've been there before. This one is called the Ikseon Hanok Village. And a hanok is a traditional Korean style home or structure I guess. This area is really cool. It's kind of got these really narrow alleyways. Pretty busy. Lots of cool little cafes. All the old buildings of course. I love the roofs and also the doors. It's a cool atmosphere and a nice place to walk around. I'm really surprised at how busy and popular this place is. It seems like a lot more tourists knew about it before I did because I pictured it as a much less busy version of the Bukchon village. But I think it's just as busy. But it is still really beautiful. I think we're going to pop into a cafe here and get a coffee. So we popped into this cafe. It's completely packed with people. It's actually quite loud in here but the setting is really cool. It's in this sort of hanok building and there's even a little garden right directly inside. So I've got myself a latte here and then also this chocolate scone. It looks really sweet. So let me break this open. Oh it's actually quite hard. I'm gonna kind of cut it in half here. Oh yeah. And I'll pick this up. Try that. That's super buttery and not actually as sweet as I had imagined. It's pretty good. Try the latte. Oh yeah that's good. So that was a pretty good cafe. A little bit expensive and not necessarily a good place to get work done if that's what you're looking for because it is super loud in there. They're kind of playing techno music. Now we're gonna head to get some cold noodles right? Yep let's go. Yeah. So unfortunately this is the restaurant we wanted to eat some North Korean style naengmyeon or cold noodles but it is under construction for this week and that's really disappointing because this restaurant is really famous and we were pretty excited to try it out. So we're gonna have to look for something else to have for dinner today. So we've decided that the best thing to do considering this is our last day here in Seoul is to have probably the most famous Korean dish of all Korean barbecue. So we're gonna jump on the metro and head to the barbecue spot. The restaurant it is super rowdy in here really loud and there is tons of different Korean barbecue restaurants here in Seoul. I don't know how many tens of thousands I'd imagine but this one in particular is my favorite. This place is just packed with locals pretty much every day of the week and Korean barbecue comes in all kinds of different unique styles. A lot of them even have like egg around the outside or cooking over charcoal but this one is pretty simple. So you can see right here we've got these nice pieces of samgyeopsal which is the Korean pork belly right on the grill with all that oil and then the kimchi on the grill and that is what really makes this one so unique to me. You grill that kimchi right on there and also you can kind of tell that the grill is slanted so all that pork juice kind of drips down and soaks into that kimchi and it just makes it so good. So we have an array of all kinds of other dishes of course too. We've got a jjigae here which is just Korean stew. We've got our lettuce leaves over here which we'll use to all kinds of different condiments to make a nice little pouch of delicious flavor and we've got also our aprons on you know just to avoid the juices from the pork. Check this out it looks really good. So there's some soju. This is like the national drink of Korea. We've got the Korean food flavor and it goes down a little bit smoother. So the worker just came over and as you can see he cut up all of our pork. This is some really good looking quality pork. There's not too much fat on it. He's chopped it into nice bite-sized pieces. Our kimchi is just bubbling away and I'm gonna make a little wrap for myself. So let me grab a piece of lettuce here and a piece of pork. Grab one of these guys. Put it in my lettuce and then I definitely gotta get some of this kimchi too. Oh man my mouth is watering. Get a piece of kimchi. Check that out. That looks beautiful. One more piece and then a little bit of this gochujang sauce down here. Grab some of that. All right and put that on top. You can just wrap this up and that is the perfect little one biter. Let's try that. That is, I don't even know how to describe how much I'm just in love with eating food in that way. You just assemble the perfect bite. Sour kimchi, that kind of fatty delicious smoky pork, a little bit of sweetness and a little bit of spiciness from that gochujang and then you wash everything down with a little bit of soju. Oh man this is a feast. So there's not just one way to do this. You can do it in many different ways. However way you want. So the way I like to do it is to grab a piece of meat, dip it in a little bit of that salt that's provided, place it on my wrap. Then you can add a little bit of the banchan that's on your table. So I have the bean sprouts and a little bit of onion. Add that and then you can add a piece of garlic as well for some extra flavor. That's gonna taste awesome. So wrap this up and you always have to eat it as one bite. There are three main reasons why I think this place is so much better than the other Korean barbecues available in Seoul. One is their kimchi is really good. It's right on the grill here. It's nice and sour just the way that I like it and nice and crisp. Two is that this pork, the pork belly, it doesn't have a lot of fat on it. It's really actually quite lean and meaty and it's really oily delicious. And then number three is that all of that fat from that pork belly kind of drips down, catches in that kimchi. Just check this out right here. You can see underneath there's a little drip tray but then on top some of that oil has been caught right in the kimchi. So if you want, you can even just eat a piece of kimchi by itself. There's just so many ways to eat Korean barbecue. It is so good. Okay guys, finish off with our Korean barbecue and that's it for today's episode. That is honestly probably my favorite restaurant in all of Seoul. We ate here three times on our trip to Seoul. It is just too good. So we left all the information for the places we visited today down in the description box so you can find them on your own. This restaurant has two different kind of portions so you can line up at the one that we will link down below but they might take you around to the back part where we were sitting. So don't be concerned if it doesn't look like the restaurant we were sitting at and that's going to be it for our Seoul series. Expect some episodes. I think we've got some special episodes coming up soon so make sure if you haven't already to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon so that you're notified when we post a video and let us know down in the comment box what you thought was the most delicious food that we tried in today's episode. We'll see you again very soon. Bye guys! Bye!