German tries KOREAN BBQ for the First Time & Impressions of Seoul, South Korea!

This is a very, very happy experience for me. We didn't know we were coming to South Korea. That's a dedicated smoking section, even for outside. I'm so happy in this country so far. We are making a multi-video series of both of our first times in South Korea. I am so excited to try some of the delicious dishes and to explore some of the different districts of Seoul. Today, we are starting off in this rented apartment in the city central district of Jung-gu. All right, we made it to Seoul, South Korea. We're here. This is our tiny accommodation. When we left Germany, we really didn't plan on coming to South Korea, but when we were looking up flights from Malaysia to Japan, there was always a stopover in either China or South Korea, and we were like, well, why don't we just extend it? Instead of just being in the airport for six hours, eight hours, we were like, let's continue on and go and see it for a few days. This is our first time out. We're in South Korea. I cannot fully grasp that we're here yet, but it's freaking epic. We arrived last night, just stepped out to grab some water and stuff from 7-Eleven, and it feels so different, man. Coming from Malaysia, A, it's way cooler. Right now, we have a minus 18 degrees, and this is gonna be our best day, so it's between 10 and 20 degrees right now. Coming from Malaysia, from like 35, big difference. Putting it into perspective, it was a six-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Seoul, so that's a long flight, just north, pretty much. North, yeah. Dude, it looks ridiculous. It's not like anything I've seen before, experienced before. It has a different vibe. Look at this street. You're just walking down. This is what I picture Japan looks like. I guess Korea is right up there with it. It feels really like a highly developed country, which it is, and so far in Asia, I've only been to like the warmer, the tourist countries more or less, and this is just very clean, very shiny, and then the streets are still decorated with all of these signs and lights, and it looks awesome. I'm super excited, dude. I haven't had this feeling in a while that I'm somewhere new, that I'm very unfamiliar with. A lot of the things are different, too, like the plugs, the outlets. It took us quite a while to figure out the apartment, but it's awesome. Yeah, we're just stepping out for the first time and looking at this stuff. It already looks like movie sets, like back alleys. Pretty awesome. Our favorite thing to do when we are in a new city is to just walk around and get a feel of the area. And a good amount of people are walking, which I like. We are staying pretty central in Seoul and not too far from the famous shopping district of Myeongdong. I think this is the start of Myeongdong, which is one of the most famous central districts of Seoul, and I hope I'm saying that right. Probably not. And it is immediately busier than the residential area we are staying in. We walked by so many clothing and K-beauty products shops. There were a lot of street food stalls and stores that had our mouths watering. Everything looked so good. We wanted to try it all, but we decided that our first meal had to be an iconic and popular style of grilling meat in Korea. So we're in the heart of Seoul in Myeongdong, and we just came to this barbecue place, Korean Barbecue. For me, for the first time ever, we have this grill in the center. She brought out these hot charcoal chunks here and then just grill on top of it. And then you have this huge buffet in the background. It's all you can eat for two hours. They have a bunch of meat there, and I got this selection plate here. I think this is some pork cutlet thing. This right here is a pork belly. And then we have this something, but it says. So I'm not sure if this is pork or beef. And some spicy chicken. And you have a whole buffet back there of all the sides. So they have japchae, they have a whole bunch of kimchi, a whole bunch of sauces that you can choose from. So we kind of got a little selection, and we're just gonna grill our meat, and Phil already ate a tater tot. So they have a lot of the sides at this buffet table, like kimchi, they have these awesome rice cakes, which I think a lot of people love. They're nice and spicy there. But then we also have japchae, which are these sweet potato noodles. I love this. This is one of my favorite Korean dishes, and you have mushrooms in there, usually carrot, and then these awesome jelly-like noodles. They're so good. One of my best friends from home was part Korean, and there's not a lot of Korean restaurants, especially when I was growing up in Greenville, South Carolina. But she made this, it's awesome. I love it. I don't know what kind of fried green thing this is, but I'm gonna try it. Oh, it's these clear noodles wrapped in a nori leaf, and then deep fried. Nice. I'm just really concerned about my garlic. I want it to cook nicely. They're just burning. I need to put them at the end, not in the middle. So as a first-time barbecuer, I'm noticing it's very hard to restrain myself from eating all the sides while the first batch of meat is still cooking. So, come on, I wanna eat you. I think this one's done. Yeah, flip it. I think we're overcooking the meat, honestly. This one has had its day. I'm gonna... What the hell are you doing? I'm cutting meat. With scissors. Yeah. This is how you do it. Oh, my God. Does it look good on the inside? Show me. I was surprised the meat chunks were that big because I expected a Korean barbecue to have these little pieces, like mouth bites, and I was wondering how we cut this, and they give you a pair of scissors and you just cut it with scissors. That's a first one for me as well. I'm gonna take a piece of this. Pretty good piece. Look at the steam. That's so nice. I think we're burning this chicken. Oh, no. Well, it's pretty fat chunks. I need to cook a little slower, I think. Yeah, the middle is the hottest part. The edges are a little... You gotta adjust the temperature. It's not consistent. Look at that chunk of chicken right here. This is definitely the pork on the bone. Thin, like a pork chop. Looks pretty good. Dude, nothing beats freshly grilled over just flames, right? Yeah, I love the flame-grilled flavors. There's the bone. Meat scissors, here we go. Cutting the chicken. Oh, it looks decently. Oh, on the inside, it looks pretty good. Outside, it looks a little burned. That's perfect. I don't know what you're saying. We're on there for a second. You're putting it back on? And I think I haven't figured out the best way yet how to eat this. Like, it's all about timing, and I bet if you grow up here, and you're just used to the style of eating, you're way better at timing it, when to put the meat on. However, I wanna try kimchi again, because I'm always not sure if I like kimchi. This is the pickled version, right? But you're German, you grew up with sauerkraut. You're used to fermented cabbage, right? So, a little piece of kimchi. It's decent. It's this fermented flavor. It's not quite my thing, but it's good, I think. Phil doesn't like sauerkraut as a German. Sauerkraut. And of course, every meal is not complete without some rice, so we got some rice, too. I love the style of eating with the grill in the center of the table. It's such a social and interactive meal. We did balance our diet with some grilled vegetables. The best thing about this is the freshness. Like, you know you're getting some meat. You get to cook it yourself. You get to add the seasonings and flavors you like, and then there's fresh vegetables you can add. Phil tried some other meat pieces, really honing in his newfound skill of cutting food with scissors, and going back for a second plate of protein for the gains. All right, we just got this nice chunk of pork belly from the grill. So far, the chicken is definitely the best. It's spicy marinara, but I'm gonna try this pork belly. It's dry when you put it on, and then just the fat starts oozing out once it's grilling. It looks so nice. Oh my God, it's hot. The flavor's nice, the char is nice, but it's too rough to eat, I think. The chicken is my favorite by far. Oh, that's a better piece. This guy just really loves putting fatty meat in his mouth. I don't know why this is so much fun. It feels like you're constantly working for your food, so it's a bit of a reward when you get it, right? They just provide you the food in the facility, and you're cooking your own food. You are the chef. It's true, and there's constantly something happening on the table. Oh, the food just arrives. I don't know, it's a lot of fun, man. The price of this two-hour buffet was around $1,650 US per person, and it is common in Korea to charge the customer extra if there's too much wasted food left over at your table at these all-you-can-eat buffets, so we were limiting the amount of food we brought back to our table, and even with two full plates of meat, multiple side dishes, there's always room in Phil's stomach for dessert. This guy, look at him. Dude, this is a very, very happy experience for me. I'm so happy in this country so far. I love it. We just finished, ate a shit-ton of meat. This is the most protein I had ratio-wise for this whole trip. I feel like often in Thailand, other countries, it's very carb-heavy, but here you can just have all the meat, which is amazing, and then, of course, they have ice cream. With the buffet, all-you-can-eat, so I had to get it, and a good old first bukla is what we call it. It's always when they have the vanilla, chocolate, strawberry combination. Goes to an all-you-can-eat buffet and wastes it on ice cream. Ice cream just makes me happy. I don't think I could live without ice cream. That was our first proper meal here in South Korea. It was good, not too shabby. Yeah, dude, standing up now after the buffet, I feel quite heavy, but that was super nice. Dude, the best thing is just the marinated spicy chicken, and it's just so fun overall, the experience. We're gonna walk through Maeundong, see if there's different vibes in different parts of the city. We'll probably find some more snacks later for later as well. After that meal, we really needed to walk it off, so we continued through the Maeundong area. One thing I really enjoyed is the amount of music, mostly K-pop, playing from different shops. There's the K-pop influence immediately. Get some groups on now. It gives the shopping experience a more upbeat vibe. Every city needs music playing all the time. It's the best thing. And the signs along some of these streets just look epic. And since we are here in this area, I was on a mission to find our little manatee plushie, a travel sibling. We go into so many shops full of cute plushies. We're going into Butter. This is the type of store we're missing in Germany, the cuteness. They literally have costumes for plushies. So cute! Some of these shops are so adorably decorated. Photo opportunities at every corner. From the lights to the music, these shops feel like an instant mood lifter. We're gonna get a little otter, baby. You come with me. They're best friends. A manatee and an otter. By the way, guys, if you like these kind of travel videos or food videos in general, maybe consider subscribing to our channel because we do these videos every week. And we're leaving South Korea soon and going to a country that I had on my bucket list for a very long time. The Myeongdong area has seen a lot of history. And today, it's a major financial hub. The oldest Catholic cathedral in Korea is located here. Oh, I think that's a dedicated smoking section here. Even for outside, you're not supposed to smoke just on public property. That is awesome. I think we're a little behind in Europe. And it is mostly known for the shopping districts and streets. This area is closed off for pedestrians with some delivery and business vehicles passing through. Funny thing, this is the first time since our trip that we have right-sided traffic. So that's a weird mindfuck. Every one age that we go usually is left-sided traffic, but here it's right-sided. So that feels different as well. It feels like a different world right now. I don't know, I love it, man. So while we were walking down this path along this palace, there's this amazing house right here. Isn't that cute? It says maybe we can set the king bed in there. That's good use of some space. First day, 20K steps done. Nice. So we're almost home, the sun is setting, and we just stepped off like two streets from Mayan Dong main street, and immediately the vibe is so different. It's so calm. It's almost 7 p.m. and it's empty. But these vibes, man, those are hard to find. It's just so calm and quiet. Things shut down. What our theory is, it's because the more advanced countries, the wages are getting so high, electricity costs, all the running costs are so high that they just not open everything for 24 hours like stuff in Thailand happens a lot to me. Yeah, maybe, we don't know, we're guessing. Also, maybe it's nice to have a little break. You don't need to be working all the time. That's why they make shifts. What if I need my cheeseburger at 3 a.m. in the morning, huh, what then? Oh, look at Korea, so beautiful, bam, Popeye's. You want some fried chicken in a country that has a lot of good fried chicken? We got Louisiana style.