Super Cheap Foods in a Korean University

In this video, I'm going to Yonsei University in Korea, which is one of the most prestigious universities. And I'll disguise as one of the students to try their amazing yet affordable cafeterias. What's the dining experience like in one of the best universities in Korea? And how good is the food? Watch this video and find out. Hey guys, it's your good uncle, Jimmy. Today I came to Yonsei University in Seoul. It's like the Ivy League of Korea, extremely intelligent people go to this school. I certainly didn't. But guess who did? My amazing guest today, Ilha. Can you believe it? I can. Today we're going to tour their cafeteria and see what all these intelligent people eat. Apparently they're extremely affordable too. Yeah, it is really affordable. This is a really cool school. It's massive. Wasn't it fun going to this school? Yeah, it's okay. They have like free concerts, you know? Free K-pop concerts. Oh yeah, the Asians came here. Yeah. Just for that reason, I should have been a student here. You can go to a cheaper school and still see the K-pop concert. You know, I'm not a student here and you're not a student here anymore either. Looking around, I feel like I look way too old to be here. So I feel like I need a disguise. Oh, okay. Do they have their school uniform that I can wear? Yes, they do. They have merchandise. Let's get some. Oh, let's go buy them. We can be like one of those douchey people that wear like Harvard hoodies and stuff. People will ask you if you went to Yonsei and you'll be like, yes. Yes, I did. I really killed it in my students. So this is their merch store. It's huge. Oh wow, it looks really nice. They have outfits for dogs. Oh my God. That's true. Koreans don't have human babies anymore. Oh yeah, so we have the dogs as our babies. This is a pretty serious merch store. This is the official jacket. The jacket. Can't you see I wore Yonsei colors today? Blue and white. Oh, I like the beige one over here too. Oh my God, it's pretty on the back. They have pink. I would look fire in this. Absolutely. Man, sometimes these Koreans do very weird things. Okay, you cool with this one? Yeah. I couldn't let her outdress me, so I got myself a t-shirt as well. That was surprisingly affordable. I don't know what you guys think. I feel like I look intelligent. What do you think, Ella? I think we blend right in. Yes, we do blend in. Also, thank you because I wanted to buy this when I was a student here, but I was too poor as a student to afford it. My Yonsei dream came true. I have a Yonsei jacket. Now that I look completely like a Korean college kid, it is time for us to go get the food. This is their student hall where they have multiple different food spots in one place, and we're going to start with their Goryeo-sam food court where they have more Western-style food. As usual in Korea, you have this kiosk where you order the food from, and after that, you just need to find yourself an empty table. It seems to get quite crowded during lunch, but they have enough tables. Jeyuk, gochujang, cream, buratang. Now, that looks nice and cheesy. I'm not sure about this being Western anymore. So, it's rice, melted cheese, and marinated pork. So, what does this taste like? It's not authentically, like, Italian or Western. I think it's decent food. Buratang is supposed to be French food, but it's so far from what it's supposed to be. I'm not sure if I would call it buratang anymore. It was just cheesy rice and pieces of pork in it. I felt like it wasn't particularly fresh, but just good enough to enjoy it. And that is cutlet rice soup. So, it's like rice with a pork cutlet, cheese melted on top. I still have an obsession with cheese. Show me, show me. It's Vietnamese. Oh, there's... Hey, it's pretty much the same rice. Okay, let's see how this one compares. I can tell you guys by the feel of my fingers, it's not, like, super crispy. It feels a little frozen food-y, to be honest. I feel like the Yonsei brains deserve better, but... How dare you question the quality of this top school? Oh, yeah, that's true. Maybe they're so smart that they had a different plan. Let's try the cheesy pork cutlet. I guess it's kind of nice. It tastes a lot better than it looks. I wish there was more freshly made feel, but I'm guessing for a college student's standards, this is good enough. I told you it's hot. So they serve it hot. That's a great thing. Very, very hot. Did you come here to eat a lot when you were a student here? It's cheaper than going out, so, yeah. I feel like it's for sure, like, reasonably priced for what it is. You want a potato? You want a plain potato? Sure. This is a place for education. That was very inappropriate. There's, like, professors and students around here. Look at all these people. They're probably going, oh, my God, uneducated monsters. They're shooting their international couple vlog here. So I think it's safe to say if you're a student here in Yonsei, academically, you would be, like, the top one percenter in Korea, right? You think so? I think it is, actually. Think about all the people that go to, like, you know, Jibangdae. What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that. It's an education. Where did you go, Jimmy? Oh, you guys are probably curious about my educational background, too. You see, I'm a very artistic person. I like to express myself. I went to this design school called Art Center in Pasadena. Oh, there's a slice of ham here, too. Eat that ham. There's a paper-thin slice. So far, I feel like they're okay, but definitely not something that I would be excited to have even as a college kid. That was a mouthful. But we have to remember that these are very affordable, even in Korean standards, and their quality and portion are more than enough to justify the price. I've never seen such a flaccid piece of pork cutlet. Yeah. It's like... It's limp. That is no good. Especially at this size, there's no excuse. It's average! This is not average. That's average! Now, that's unacceptable. Yeah, that is unacceptable. But you do bring up a good point. I wish the pork cutlet was more, like, firm. Firm. Well, we just had a lot of rice, but can we finally have something Western? Tteokbokki... Rose Tteokbokki Spaghetti. Damn. So, that's an interesting-looking spaghetti. So, this is our Polo Rose Tteokbokki Spaghetti. Pororo. Sounds kind of like Pororo. Yeah, it does sound like Pororo. Any of you guys that are from Italy, you tell me if this is authentic. It looks very authentic to me. Grazie. They're probably dying on the inside. What? So, this is Korean-style rice cake. There's a lot of these fusion food in Korea. And I'll be honest, they're not always bad. The rice cake is ironically good. The spaghetti, I'm not too sure about this. So, this pinkish rose sauce, it's gotten really popular in the past few years in Korea. It's like a mix of cream and gochujang, I think. Paromi wanted to dislike it in defense of the Italians, but I ended up enjoying it quite a lot. If I get tired of doing content on YouTube, you and I can work together. We can start another channel. Yeah? And be like a fake international couple. I think we'd be a great fake international couple. The typical international couple stuff, okay? What does my mom think about my American girlfriend? My mom is very surprised. My mother-in-law loves tteokbokki. You know one of the mistakes I always see Koreans make? When they explain something to a foreign parent, they say, I'm so hard. Oh? Yeah, honestly. Can you figure out what it would be in Korean? No, that's a wrong kind of mother-in-law video. I'm having a hard time. Ah. One of my exes said it to my mom, and she said, I hope you're not. I'm so hard, but you can help me with that. Okay, back to the conversation about food. So there's some chicken, pieces of chicken in here. They're good. Yeah, the chicken's really good. Tiny pieces, but it's nice and tender. They also have fish cakes, which tteokbokki has. Well, that garlic bread took a while. They absolutely forgot. So I got a piece of garlic bread here. This was only 1,000 won, which is like less than a dollar. You wanna try some? I want your Westerner opinion. Can I share it? No, not like that. Not until we start the channel. I'm not a Western food expert, so I'm not sure if it's supposed to be this hard. Like she was saying, it was a little too hard, but flavor-wise, it was really good. I will say that so far, my favorite is this one, the spaghetti. If you guys had one of those pink buldak noodles before, this tasted like a much less spicy version of that. All right, that was a great amount of Western food. I hope you feel represented. Yes. Why would gochujang pasta? But I wanna feel represented, too, because Asian lives matter. Yes. And I heard that they have a Korean restaurant here, too. Can we have some Korean food this time? Some more kimchi-smelling stuff? So there's another cafeteria called Mannasem. They were selling more Korean dishes. I like how you can serve yourself some side dishes. I think these are for free. Yeah, we can't live without some unlimited kimchi. Okay, we got a few things over here. Let's take a look. So that's the cold noodle, and this is the boktan jumeokbap with spam, and jjagechi, which is just jjapaghetti noodles, egg, and cheese. I didn't know about it, but you have to make it yourself. So we'll do that later. Let's have the noodle first. All right, this is Korean-style cold noodles, buckwheat noodles, and some radish. Cucumber. Cucumber, I hate cucumber. Yeah, I love cucumber. I wasn't gonna talk about it because I don't like cucumber. Here. I love cucumber. You can have it all. Thank you. So I would say, generally, the food prices here, it's about half of what you would pay outside, right? Yeah. If I was homeless, I would come and eat here. Finding food at this price range is almost impossible in Korea now, so I feel like it's great that a university offers food for cheap. It's not quite as good as how you would have it outside, but good enough. I think it's decent. So usually, when you get cold noodles in Korea, they give you mustard and vinegar in a separate bottle, but they already added mustard for us. I feel like it's a touch too much. Do you put mustard in yours? I don't. I don't either. I'm a purist when it comes to cold noodles, you know? The cold noodle wasn't, like, super delicious, but I just love cold noodles in general, so I really enjoyed their cold noodles. Let me have this bum spam rice ball covered with dried seaweed. Now, I'd be very upset if they only had, like, the tiniest slice of spam in here. Korea does that. Korean restaurants tend to be very stingy with their ingredients. I hope this school is not. It's a little tiny chunk. It's not even a slice. It's like tiny cubes. If you visit Korea, you'll have very similar experiences. We don't appreciate this as customers, but business owners tend to do this very often. It's, like, barely legal to call this spam rice ball, but okay. I didn't know I had to cook the instant noodle myself, but thankfully, they had a beautifully streamlined cooking station for this, so let me show you guys. Out of these three, you have to open this one. Can you open this? So over here, they have this ramen-making station, and I'll be honest with you guys, I'm not Korean enough to know how to use this. I wasn't smart enough to go to Yonsei, but all I had to do was to press one of these buttons. There you go. Usually, when you cook this jjapaghetti, you have to dump the water at the end, but these machines were so intelligent, so they only add just enough water, and by the time they're done cooking, you end up with the perfect amount of water. You want to put the rest of the packets in now? Oh, that looks like dirt. At this point, you just need to mix everything and throw the cheese in to perfect your jjagechi. By the way, they call it jjagechi because it's jjapaghetti, egg, and cheese. It looks better in photos. What do you mean? It looks great. It did a good job. Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, that's one of the most iconic instant noodles in Korea, jjapaghetti. Jjapaghetti. If you guys haven't realized by now, Koreans love adding cheese to just about everything. In their defense, most of the time, it makes things taste good. So yeah, if you guys see jjapaghetti in a Korean supermarket, maybe try to buy it, make it yourself, see how you like it. I must say, though, everything else that he had was so affordable. Making this instant noodle costs like $3 here. It's not expensive, but it feels kind of expensive in comparison, right? Yeah. I had to work for it, too. Pretty happy with the overall quality, but I feel like there's more room for us to explore here because I heard that there is a buffet restaurant in this school. So how do we go there? Maybe if we go upstairs here? On the second floor of the same building, they have a buffet restaurant, and it only costs about $5. It is a small selection of food, but you can serve yourself as much food as you want. Apparently, they change the menu daily, but this is what they had when I was visiting. So it is buffet, and you can have it as much as you want. My first impression was that it is a limited buffet experience. Like, they only had one item that I would consider a main dish, which is this donkatsu, but then again, it is $5. I want to try this jjolmyeon noodles, too, wheat-based noodle that is served cold and it's very, very stretchy and chewy. What's the flavor of jjolmyeon? It has a sense of vinegar, too. It can be pretty spicy. They also have some salad. I don't think they had the dressing, too. I forgot to get it. There's a spring roll of some kind. Okay, I was not impressed by this. It was almost empty inside, just like how I feel these days. This is the donkatsu. Okay amount of meat in it. Oh, how would you compare the donkatsu here to the Western donkatsu restaurant? So, I like the crispiness of this donkatsu. It tastes very fresh. The meat is more ground pork than real pork chops. So, I would say, quality-wise, the other place might have been better. Freshness-wise, they beat it. Yeah, this looks more firm, you know, and crispy. They have this super skinny tteokbokki, too. How would you compare that tteokbokki here? The Western tteokbokki was better. I like thick tteokbokki. Yeah, me too. I like it thick and firm. I know, right? Something as small as this, it's like you put it in your mouth, what's the point? It's like throwing a hot dog down a hallway. I feel like this is a good restaurant for the young students who are very hungry, but who wants to eat a lot. So, overall, my food experience in Yonsei was that there are a lot of decent options for food, and the price is very, very reasonable. I do feel like the quality can improve, but unless you're very particular about the food, you'll be happy with the food in this university as a student. All right, I want to end the day with something to drink. Unfortunately, it looks like they don't have like a traditional Korean-style dessert place. They have jamba juice. Jamba juice isn't original to Yonsei, but I appreciate the fact that they have it, because sometimes you want that corporate America flavor. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching the video. You guys have time, and I know you do. Go watch my other videos too, okay? Goodbye, my friends. Look at all these future world leaders, Ilha. Little do they know, we have such low birth rate. By the time they're old, they will have no people to lead. They can lead their chihuahuas and Maltese.