Korean Street Food $100 Challenge in Seoul 🇰🇷 Crazy Night Market + Hanwoo Beef BBQ!

Welcome to Chopstick Travel. I'm Luke Martin, and this is what you can eat for $100 in Seoul, South Korea. By no means is Seoul the cheapest city in the world, but today we're gonna find out how far we can stretch our $100. And at today's exchange rate, that's about 130,000 Korean won. And we're not going to be cheaping out either. We want to eat premium foods and street foods here in Seoul today. So we've come this morning to the Majang Meat Market. This is the largest meat market in Korea, and I heard this is the best place to get affordable Hanwoo beef. So Hanwoo beef is the Korean equivalent of Japanese Wagyu beef. So think super marbly, fatty, melt in your mouth, tender beef. So the Majang Meat Market is a working market since the 1960s. It's not just Hanwoo beef here. There's lots of beef, and it's not just the premium cuts. You can also get the inner, the cheaper cuts. There's also pork here, of course. And the way that this works is, if you're a tourist like me, you're looking for these places that have set plates, and you can buy the plate of raw meat. And then just above the restaurant, or sorry, just above the shop is the restaurant where you can actually have a Korean barbecue and cook it up. So that's what we're gonna do. Okay, we've made our selection. That was 75,000, so more than half of our budget, but I think it's still a really good deal because this beef looks incredible. And now we're just heading upstairs to the barbecue. So we've come upstairs. We have a barbecue here. It's a charcoal barbecue, which is awesome. And she just did the first couple cuts of meat for us, and just look at how beautiful. This meat is so fatty, so marbly. There's different cuts. This is Hanwoo beef. So like I said before, almost like the equivalent of Japanese Wagyu, Korean version of Japanese Wagyu. And we have all of our banchan, of course. And I'm gonna make myself up my first bite. Okay, I'm gonna make myself a little lettuce wrap here. Grab a piece of Hanwoo beef. Get some onions with a little bit of sauce on it. And then I believe this is the, I'm gonna show this is, this is not gochujang. This is the soybean. And then some of these spring onions with spicy dressing. And then that is the perfect little one-biter wrap. Fold it up. That is definitely the way to eat it with all of the ingredients packed in there with the Hanwoo beef. It's just a perfect one-biter. But I gotta try a piece just by itself. I'm gonna go for this piece over here. So I can get the real natural flavor. This one's still a little bit medium rare. I'm gonna grab that with my chopsticks. Just a tiny bit of salt. So fatty. Look at how beautiful that is. Oh my gosh. This place is beef heaven. Instant liquefaction. As soon as it heats up in your mouth, just completely melts. Oh my god. Effortless chewing. Chase it with a piece of kimchi. Super good quality. I love that it's cooking on charcoal too. It gives it such a smoky flavor. Let's make ourselves another little wrap here. I love this culture too here in Korea. Just taking all these banchan, all these side dishes. You can just kind of add whatever you'd like. Some bean sprouts, clove of garlic maybe. A little bit of this soybean paste. Let's try that. That's a great way to eat it because you get some veggies and it's sort of a even mix between meat and vegetables. But I do find you can't feel the tenderness as well. And now here she goes with a big chunk. Look at this steak. Oh my gosh. The marbling on there is just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful marbling. So much fat on there. Gotta cook it on charcoal too. Yeah, I think I prefer just to have it with like a little bit of salt. Maybe one of these onions with a tiny bit of the sauce. You can really feel the fat, the tender, the melt in the mouth factor. But also very good with the lettuce wrap. Gosh, this is amazing. So 75,000 for the plate of beef, but then you also have to pay 6,000 per person for the barbecue fee, which includes, of course, all these banchan, which are totally refillable. But I think it's so worth it. You never find Kobe beef or something like that in Japan for this price and not this quality. Like the marbling on there is just insane. She just cooked up that thicker piece, that thick kind of steak cut. But I think I like this thin cut, the very first cut that she used more. And I honestly just prefer it with a little bit of salt, just by like itself without any of the other flavors because the flavor of the fat melting in your mouth is enough. It's amazing. Every time, it's like, oh, heaven. I'm gonna do the last one by myself. Look at this beautiful cut of meat. Oh my gosh. You know how they say in Japan that they feed the Wagyu beer? I wonder in Korea if they're feeding their cattle soju and they're listening to BTS instead of Mozart? It's just glistening with oil every time you flip it. A little bit of smoke comes up because all that fat dripped down onto the charcoal, which adds a lot of flavor to it. And this barbecue is better than those gas barbecues because you're using that charcoal. We completely turn the heat off and just let the excess heat from the charcoal just slowly cook this. All right, this is our last piece. But honestly, that was a ton of Hanwoo beef for 75,000. Seriously good deal. I don't think you could get one piece of Wagyu beef anywhere in Tokyo for the same price. So this is definitely the place to have super high quality beef in Seoul on a budget. We've still got half of our $100 left to go. That was amazing. So 12,000 won for the cooking fee and 75,000 won for the beef. So if my math is correct, that should leave us with 43,000 won left. So we spent more than half of our budget on the beef, but totally, totally worth it. We're gonna catch the metro now to the night market where I'm sure we'll be able to get a lot more food for our money. Lots of steak. So this is the Myeongdong Night Market, right in the center of Seoul, the perfect place to spend the rest of our $100 budget. So let's go bow 43,000 won on some Korean street food. For our first snack at Myeongdong Night Market, we're trying an iconic Korean street food called the egg bread. So basically just cracks an egg into some batter, bakes it, and it's sort of like sweet and savory. It was only 2,000 won, so pretty cheap. Let's try it out. This is it right here. I can see the egg kind of peeking out the middle there. Give it a try. It's like a pound cake. I had one of these years ago. I remember it being more sweet, but this one's actually on the savory side. It's like a sweet pancake, but then a little bit salty egg on the inside. You can see the egg yolk kind of peeking out the side there too. Oh, that's actually really good. Super fluffy. Oh, that's really good actually. I'd say it's like 60-40 egg to cake ratio. It's more egg than cake. Perfect little snack. Let's go find some more. After I saw that the egg bread was only 2,000 won, I was kind of thinking that we might have a difficult time spending our 43,000 won left of our $100 challenge, but I changed my mind after we went to the next stall because they are selling lobster tails, which are 20,000 won. So we've ordered up one lobster tail. She blow torches it, big flame, and it's covered in cheese. And this is the final result here. I mean, lobster tail is the premium cut, so there's nothing cheap about lobster tail, that's for sure. And there is a ton of cheese on there. Let me try to grab a piece. Oh yeah, look at that. Get some cheese too. That actually looks really good. Tastes like expensive lobster that's been covered in cheap cheese. It is sort of a shame. I probably would have rathered it just blow torched without the cheese on top, but it's still not bad. It's kind of a tiny lobster tail too. Like, look at it. That was like probably 30%. I'm gonna only take one more bite because Mink needs to have some too. Let's try. Nah, it's good though. That's actually a decent chunk of lobster in there. But man, is that ever a lot of cheese on top. It tastes like smoky butane, lighter fluid that she put on top of it too. Not bad, not great. My turn to try the lobster. That is a ton of cheese. That's a big bite. Big bite? That was pretty much the rest of the lobster. Oh no, there's one more bite. Look at how much cheese is on that though. Oh my gosh. Too much cheese, not enough lobster. That is a lot of cheese. Yeah, not bad. 21,000 won left. I think it's fried chicken time. What do you think? I want fried chicken. Let's go. So fried chicken tossed in a sweet and spicy Korean sauce. And then there's also some tteokbokki here too. You can see. Yeah, let's get rid of one of those first so I can get down to the good stuff, the chicken. It's hot, fresh. I should say, tteokbokki is like a rice cake. It's like chewy, but because he's fried it, the outside is a little bit crisp. Definitely a bit spicy, but sweet at the same time. All right, let's try some famous Korean fried chicken. Famous around the world. Oh, that's hot. What's not to love about fried chicken? Oh my gosh, that sauce that they toss it in is amazing. Tastes like black pepper, like a little bit spicy, but not too much. Super crispy on the outside, but it's just a thin batter. The sauce is sort of caramelized around the outside. It's definitely a little bit sweet. It's good, but my heart is still with Taiwanese fried chicken. Sorry Korea, your fried chicken is probably the second best in the world. I love Taiwanese fried chicken. So this was 7,000 Korean won. That leaves us with 14,000 left to go. I'm sure we can get a couple more things. Next up, something very traditional, Korean odeng, fish cake. You can get it either spicy version. Of course, we opted for the spicy version, or you can get a plain in sort of a fish stock, and it's just served on the end of this stick. So it's sort of like a fish cake that's wrapped up on this stick, and yeah, he's got tons of them just boiling away in that red sauce, that Korean red sauce that everything seems to be in here. Let's try this out. I think it's gonna be hot. Yum. The texture of the fish cake is so fluffy and soft. It's like a pillow. That's definitely spicy. Immediately can feel the heat building, and the taste is like gochujang, Korean bean chili sauce that's a little bit sweet, a little bit earthy, and a little bit spicy, of course, too. Yeah, wow. Actually, that's probably the spiciest thing I've tasted in Korea so far. The texture of the fish cake is just amazing, though. I don't know how else to describe it, but just pillowy, just fluffy. Yum. Before I try, I just wanna say what I like about this store is you can get as much soup as you want, and you can come back and refill it. Yeah. So. Ooh, my mouth is burning. It's hot. Mm. Yeah. Oh, going for the straight soup. Ooh, this is what I'm craving for for many days. Yeah. Finally a Thai-level spice. Oh, this is really good. Yeah. I think Korean food might be a little bit misleading because it's always covered in this red sauce, and it looks spicy, but sometimes it's more on the sweet side, but this is spicy, for sure. Yeah, when it's spicy, it's really spicy. You have to be careful when you swallow because I almost cough over there. The owner was just telling me that all of the odeng and fish cakes are made, handmade by his father every single day, and you can tell because the quality is really good. Like I was saying, the texture's super fluffy, and that was 2,000 won. I think that leaves us with 12,000 left to spend. For 5,000, we just bought our next snack, so I think that, what's that leave us with? That leaves us with 7,000 left. We're getting there. We're nearly done our $100 challenge, and this is the classic Korean japchae, glass noodles with some veggies in there. Typical Korean traditional street food snack. We've got an ambulance trying to come through the market. Oh, smoke. Maybe somebody's ODing on Korean street food. I don't know. Let's try the japchae. It's so smothered in sauce. Soy sauce base, for sure. It's definitely a little bit sweet. I love the texture of the noodles. They're so chewy. They're so bouncy and chewy, but it's really too greasy with all that sauce, and be careful with these because you gotta chew them and chew them and chew them, so don't take a huge mouthful because you might choke. It's more likely that that ambulance was coming for someone who's choking on japchae than overdosing on street food. You know what? Funny story. When I ordered japchae, and then I was glancing at the chili sauce, I came straight into it, and the owner was like, oh, super spicy, careful, super spicy, and I was like, I want spicy. I miss spicy food. Is it spicy? Not really. It's a little bit sweet, like you say, but I love glass noodles. Don't choke. You've been called an ambulance. I don't know the 911 in Korea. All right, home stretch. We are stuffed, but we've got 7,000 left to spend. I could spend it on a black pink pillow, but we're going for more food for your enjoyment. So for 5,001, leaving us with 2,001, we're eating a lot for 100 US dollars. I mean, nobody says Seoul is that cheap, but certainly you can find a lot of cheap street food here in Seoul. We've got this candied strawberry. They had all kinds of different things, all fruits, candied. They basically just pour this sugar syrup over top of it and let it crystallize. I hope this doesn't break my tooth, but let's try it. This huge strawberry. A little bit sour, a little bit sweet, and a super crunchy, sugary exterior. Actually, it's really good. It's so crunchy. You gotta be careful not to break a tooth. They had little mandarin oranges too, which I've never seen before, but had to go with the strawberry. Just looked too good. It explodes with juice in your mouth, yum. So if I've been counting correctly, that leaves us with 2,001 left. That was a lot of food for $100. I cheated a little bit for the last 2,001. We're so stuck, can't eat anymore, so we just decided to go with a little water bottle and I'm not gonna lie to you guys, I took two bottles up because they said 1,000 per bottle, so I was like, okay, I have 2,001 left, and then I got to the front and it was actually buy one, get one free, so I still have 1,001 left, but that's okay. We're ending it. I still say that's a success in my books for today's $100 Korean food challenge. A lot more food than I was expecting, especially after spending more than 60% of our budget on that Hanwoo beef barbecue this morning. What a great day of eating here in Seoul. Make sure, if you haven't already, subscribe because we have more videos coming from Korea soon and I'll see you guys on the next episode of Chopstick Show. Bye.