I Ate the Most Viral Street Foods in Korea!

Korean Original Tastes
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Video Summary
AI GeneratedA food tour of Korea's most viral street food markets—Gwangjang, Tongin, and Mangwon—aims to find the \"king\" of each location based on taste, value, and hospitality. After sampling a wide array of traditional and fusion dishes, the tour concludes by awarding a grand prize to a vendor who embodies the best of Korean market culture.
In this video, I'm eating my way through Korea's most viral street food markets.
From traditional Korean temple food to trendy Korean bites and everything in between,
joining me will be my friend Joe, who's an expert in Korean cuisine.
We'll be visiting three legendary Korean street food markets,
and in each one, the best bite will be named the king.
By the end of this video, we'll be comparing the kings of each market
and pick one ultimate winner to take home 1 million Korean won in cash.
First, we're going to the most famous of them all, Gwangjang Market.
We're at our first stop.
And you can't come to Korea without coming to Gwangjang Market,
the most famous out of all the markets in Korea.
I feel like I've seen this place in so many videos online.
Now it's time to try it.
All right, let's go.
This is what we call like a guabaegi.
It's like a twisted bread with sugar on it.
Really, really common kind of dessert in Korea.
We got somebody here literally making it in front of us live.
So as we walk the line, we can see how they're making our guabaegi.
So it almost looks like a twisted churro donut, just Korean style.
And it's always fresh as well.
You gotta start with dessert, right?
All right, so our first stop.
Something called guabaegi.
It's like literally a twisted churro donut.
I smell something, not just sugar, it's like citrusy.
This was only 1,000 won, 70 cents in America, about.
So pretty good.
Let's try it.
When you eat the hot things, they're always giving you the paper cup like this.
Pick it up with your teeth and grab it.
And grab it.
Oh my god.
That's really good.
This is perfect.
You can see inside the dough.
The exterior is so flaky, but the inside is so chewy.
On a cold day like today, this, perfect bite.
Gwangjang, first bite, automatic king.
Let's see what else they got though.
Yeah.
Whoa, what?
I've never seen ddeokbokki and radish combined.
Dude, that is different.
Does the radish like add some freshness and some sweetness, huh?
And now he's just putting the ddeokbokki in there.
Look how thick it is too.
We just got back from our second spot, ganggane ddeokbokki.
It is really interesting because normally we already put the radish in there.
But this restaurant, they're just adding radish at the end.
And then they said that we need to cover the ddeokbokki with the radish on it.
A little bit of an interesting take on it.
Yeah, it is.
And let's try.
I can see the radish is chewy.
And then, wow, it's a little spicier.
The radish.
It makes it a little bit more fresher.
The radish is really nice.
I kind of like this more than some other ddeokbokki I've had.
Oh, really?
Yeah, a little bit.
Right here, we have sotteok sotteok.
This is pretty traditional, I feel like.
You have like a sausage and some rice cake dripped in some sauce.
Oh, with some kind of the chicken sauce.
It's really, really common, chicken sauce in Korea.
We call it yangnyeom.
Yangnyeom chicken.
It's a sweet and spicy level, right?
Oh, yeah.
You need to eat together.
Okay, let's try.
Really nice.
Honestly, the size of the ddeokbokki is very intimidating.
When you eat it, so pleasant.
It's like cushiony.
Almost like soothing, cozy in my mouth.
Really nice.
But does it dethrone the king?
Some kkwabaegi, the place that sold the twisted donuts.
I don't know if this beats it.
I mean, I can say this is really nice.
This one, the radish is nice.
But ddeokbokki-wise, it's okay.
Really?
To be honest.
As a local guy.
But the kkwabaegi, phew.
Yeah, I think for the price, 1,000 won for the kkwabaegi.
And that flavor, I don't think you can beat that.
All right, let's go to the third spot, man.
Okay.
So right now, we are watching the very traditional pancake here.
We call it nokdujeon.
Means like a long bean pancake.
Super famous.
When we have a rainy day, we eat this kind of pancake.
Because when it rains, it sounds like this.
This is almost like a deep-fried pancake.
Yeah, it is, it is.
Very savory style pancake.
Long bean pancake, huh?
Wow, that looks so good.
And it's so thick.
We gotta order it.
Okay, right here, we have our bindaetteok modum.
Modum, right?
Yes, yes.
So that's like, what, all variety?
Yeah.
So what do we have?
This is the style?
So this is the pancake with the beef in there.
Wow.
Or pork.
Look how thick it is.
Very thick.
What's this one below?
This is like long bean pancake.
Dude, this is almost like a potato pancake, so thick though.
Yeah, it is.
Extremely crispy.
Wow.
A lot of oil.
If you're trying to be healthy, you don't want to go here.
I mean, it looks good.
And then with the pancake, the makgeolli is a nice one.
Which is a rice wine.
So I'll shake it, I'll shake it.
Does it sound nice?
So I'm older than him, so I need to pour with one hand.
Because I'm gonna die first.
So this is the bindaetteok?
The long bean?
Yes.
So is this bean sprouts I see?
Yeah.
Oh, what's that smell?
It smells good.
A lot of onion in there, right?
Yeah.
So how do you eat this?
You have a side dish here.
Onion on the top, okay.
And put it in the soy sauce here.
And try this one.
Oh my.
It's so heartwarming.
I can see why you eat this during the rain.
And also like we saw a lot of the oil on the top, right?
So I thought it is quite heavy, but it's not that heavy.
This one is kind of melting in your mouth.
We eat this one, right?
And then we need to drink it a little bit.
The makgeolli.
I feel crazy.
So I've been trying to describe the flavor of this bindaetteok.
It's crunchy.
It's chewy inside.
Very comforting and nutty at the same time.
And then you dip it in the little soy sauce here with some of the onion.
It's a flavor bomb in your mouth.
So this bindaetteok is really good, man.
I got surprised.
But I don't think it's ready to dethrone the kkwabaegi.
The kkwabaegi still remains the king.
So let's go to the next lot though.
Let's see what they got.
Traditional like cotton candy.
Traditional biscuit.
So this is fermented honey.
And just the soybean powder.
In Korean, traditional rice cake powder.
On the other side, one more hole.
Just using my hand.
Stretching, stretching.
So little by little.
I'm gonna make 16,000 strings honey.
So one more stretching, stretching.
So little by little.
Now honey is one string.
So one.
So one double two.
And two double four.
So four double eight.
Eight double sixteen.
So doubling.
So 32, 64, 128.
So 256, 512.
Middle side, middle side.
1024.
Look at this.
This one.
1024 strings honey.
That is crazy.
So not yet come down.
So keep going.
2048.
And so 4096.
8192.
So last count.
Finally, 16,000 strings honey.
16,000.
One, two, three.
Look at this.
What?
Like, that is crazy.
That looks like hair.
This is my grandmommy hair.
And not finished.
Second step here.
So dividing half.
Dividing half for honey.
Just cutting.
And one more cutting.
So inside, we have no sugar.
Only put it in the nuts.
Peanuts, almond, sesame, black sesame.
So put it in the nuts.
Rolling, rolling.
Okay, so rolling, rolling, rolling.
It's done.
Very, very delicious.
Yummy, yummy, yummy.
Yummy for your tongue.
So try.
Just one bite.
16,000 strands of fermented honey wrapped around nuts.
This is nuts.
Cheers, man.
Just one bite.
Korean traditional guy cutting in there.
So very, very delicious.
Wow, very different.
Oh, it's actually kind of savory.
Not as sweet as I thought it would be.
Oh, your flavor is soybean.
Soybean flavor, oh.
And the nuts really comes through.
Very peanutty.
Yeah, it is, yeah.
Wow.
But then the honey is very subtle, too.
That fermentation is what makes it stretchy.
Yeah, it is.
And also, it feels like some kind of a dduk.
Dduk with the red meat is kind of like dduk.
Number one.
But it's really soft.
So that was really good.
But I don't think it beats the kkwabaegi.
I'm sorry.
Gwangjang Market, man.
You guys got some flack online, but it's pretty good.
So next spot, where are we going?
Now, the kkwabaegi set the bar pretty high.
It was hot, crispy, and chewy.
Next up is Tongin Market, famously known for its traditional coin lunchbox experience,
where you trade brass coins for bites of street food.
All right, guys.
Now we're at Tongin Market.
This place is really special because they serve food,
and it's these special lunchbox-style trades.
You can buy their food with these specific brass coins that are very traditional.
We're going to go to about five different stalls out here.
We're going to pick one as the king of Tongin Market.
Let's go check out the food.
All right, first stop, where are we going?
We'll go to the oily tteokbokki, which is not really common in Korea.
Because normally, the tteokbokki, we fry with a spicy sauce,
with a rice cake or fish cake.
But this one, we fry with the oil.
That's why we call it oily tteokbokki.
It's very different.
Oh, okay.
It's my first time to try.
All right, let's try it.
So it's kind of like in a wok, almost.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, okay.
You can see the oil at the bottom, right?
So they're only using the powder, not the gochujang.
So if you use the gochujang, it's not real.
Wow.
And the other one's marinated in soy sauce.
So I just gave my tray over, and she's going to put in the tteokbokki inside.
We just got back from our first spot, Wonjo Halmani Gireum Tteokbokki.
So this is really interesting because they kind of stir-fried
their tteokbokki before they served it to us.
So outside, it's kind of got a crispy texture.
This one's like a soy sauce marinated tteokbokki,
and the other one is kind of like a gochujang paste.
Okay, first bite.
Thank you.
Look at the color on this one.
You guys can see it.
It's toasted.
It's crispy.
It's extremely chewy.
It's a really fun bite.
I like it a lot.
It's different between the outside and inside, actually.
Outside is very, okay, a little bit crunchy, as you said,
and the inside is very, very chewy.
Yeah, it feels really thick.
I think it'll be too chewy.
The way they made it so thin is actually very pleasant.
I like it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's try the spicy one.
She said she already pre-marinated with some powder.
It's not paste, actually.
Like if I look at this, it's oil and powder,
and it's kind of like clumped up.
Let's get it.
It's kind of like Cheeto dust, I feel like.
Like hot Cheeto dust.
Yeah, it is.
You can really feel the powder in it.
Oh, actually, I like it.
What do you think?
Personally, I like the soy sauce one better.
So this is the first spot.
This is automatically named the king.
Let's see who dethrones it, though.
Now we're going to go to our second spot.
Where are you about to take me?
We are heading this one.
Gojadong Dak-kkochi, which is like chicken sticks.
They made a chicken stick with a chicken leg
with a lot of different type of the sauce on there.
It's like a traditional Korean-style street food?
Yeah, it is.
In Korea, we love chicken leg.
So we're always giving the chicken part to the guests or father.
That is our tradition.
For example, you have a wife, right?
Yeah.
So we are not giving chicken wing to the wife or my girlfriend.
Why?
Because they're going to fly away.
But that's what we think.
Well, let's get some chicken.
So we have probably, you know, we have some chicken underneath.
We need some like sauce on top.
I think it's kind of the traditional Korean style of the chicken sauce.
We call it yangnyeom chicken sauce in Sweden.
Oh, okay.
Sometimes a little bit spicy.
All right, let's get one of these.
Oh, we got so good, man.
Look at the steam on that thing.
I have a good feeling about this.
All right, shall we try?
Yeah.
Wow.
Dude, look at all the perilla leaves on this.
So much leaves on there.
Oh my god.
This combination is really weird
because I never thought about adding the sesame leaf on the chicken with a spicy sauce.
Wow.
How do you make yangnyeom sauce typically?
They're adding some kind of gochujang sometimes
and with a pepper and a little bit of the sugar in there
with a soy sauce on there and mixing.
So it's spicy, it's sweet,
and it's got a little bit of that earthiness to it too
that you kind of get from gochujang.
It's very interesting.
The chicken, I think it's like a chicken thigh
and they also have these seeds on there on top for a little bit of crunch
and then the perilla leaves to add a little bit of freshness.
So overall, a really balanced bite.
Grandma, I'm sorry.
You got dethroned, grandma.
So we got our new king, the perilla leaf wrap.
All right, we got another spot to go to though, right?
Yeah.
Let's see.
Look at this next stall we just stumbled upon.
When I think about Korean market,
this is what I think about.
Wow, look at this.
They got kimchi, jeon.
Look at the freshness.
Look at the japchae too.
Let me get one kimchi jeon.
I want to compare this to my grandma's.
She thinks she's going to win.
So right here, we're at Jeonju Banchan.
The stall out here, this very nice emo told us get the japchae
and get some kimchi jeon.
Japchae is a Korean style vermicelli noodle.
It's coated in sesame oil and seasoned
and it's got all types of vegetables in it.
You see wood ear mushroom.
You got carrots here.
You got onions, peppers.
Everything that you can find in your fridge is thrown in there.
So we got some kimchi jeon.
This is a kimchi pancake, Korean style.
She said it's going to be better than my grandma's, but let's see.
Not bad at all.
It's good.
I can tell she made this a couple of hours ago.
I think though, right?
My grandma only makes me fresh kimchi jeon.
Try this japchae though.
No, when people think about Korean food,
this is one of the first thing they think about, some japchae.
It's okay.
If you're traveling from out of Korea and you're coming here,
you want some japchae, you want some kimchi jeon, not bad.
But hey, not as good as my grandma's.
Sorry, emo.
So this stall, unfortunately, did not dethrone the current king.
Let's go to the next spot.
Okay, we're at the next spot now.
Where are you taking me, brother?
So we are heading to the Red Bean Porridge restaurant.
It's really, really hard to make this one.
Let's go learn how to make it.
Wow, this is so interesting.
I've never seen red bean porridge before.
So what's this all about?
Yeah, so in here, like you can see the rice
and then this is a rice ball, but we call it se-al.
Like it means like the egg of the bird,
but it's not a se-al, really.
So she was talking to you earlier.
What is so special about this?
She said that the red bean is really good for the blood circling
and also for the skin care.
That's why her skin was super nice.
I assume that she's like almost 70 something, right?
She looks like really, really nice.
Westerners, when they are like 50 years old,
they have a lot of wrinkles, right?
She gave a lot of credit to the red bean, so.
And also in Korea, like the red bean means
if you have bad luck,
we put the red bean in front of your house
to avoid the bad luck.
Oh, so it's a lot of tradition with the red bean.
Yeah.
Let's see if it dethrones the king.
So she doesn't add any sugar.
So she said that actually.
The point is that this is a real local market.
Only the local old people come here.
The old people, like they don't like the sweet taste.
That's why she desugar it.
So I can say this is a very traditional taste of patjuk.
I will say I feel like I'm eating something very healthy,
but at the same time,
I would have liked a little bit of sugar.
Oh, me too, man.
So it's literally just like a blend of beans, I feel like.
But it's got a lot of health benefits.
So, you know, credit to her.
To the stall at patjuk,
unfortunately, you did not dethrone the king.
So far, we've been to four stalls now.
This guy's currently our king of the market.
Plus, he's one of the nicest too.
Gotta give credit to that.
What is this?
This is called gujeolpan.
It's a traditional Korean wrap.
You put a thin layer of starch on it.
Foreigners call this a crepe, right?
You put a variety of vegetables in there.
Like this.
Thank you.
And then you do this.
You put in the perilla leaves, right?
Yes, the perilla leaves inside.
I think one is enough.
Yes, yes, yes.
You can give me 12,000 won.
12,000 won?
12,000 won.
That's it?
Yes.
Okay, so this one, lotus rice trap, huh?
This is what she's known for.
Let's try it.
Let's open.
Oh, look at this.
Like steam is coming out from there.
Whoa, looks amazing.
Sweet potato, sticky rice.
You got a little bit of everything in there.
Some pumpkin seeds and all that.
Let's dig in, Joe.
Yep.
Wow.
Four bites to go.
Gyeranmari.
It's a rolled egg omelet with a pollock roe inside.
Look at the center.
These are all fish eggs.
Wow.
Yeah, she said that she wants to heat it up,
but it's still really good.
It's kind of like a chawanmushi rolled up inside.
You have an egg roll on the outside.
You have the saltiness from the egg roll in the center.
So the seasoning, the salt comes from the eggs.
It's really good.
I like this one a lot.
Okay, we try this one.
So right here, we have the colorful crepe.
Look at the color on that.
It's like she almost blended up some beets to make the color red.
And then inside, you have a little bit of egg, carrots, some vegetables.
Who knows what else she put in it?
But it's all love.
Let's dig in, brother.
Something is sweet.
Wood ear mushroom?
Uh-uh.
No, when she puts in all these different ingredients,
I feel like that just shows how much love she puts into her food.
I can really taste that.
Overall, very good.
She is definitely challenging our current king.
I think so too, man.
First of all, visually, it's very fun.
It's colorful.
It looks playful.
It's all things that I would take home to eat.
Flavors are there.
So right now, we're deciding for the king between the lotus lady here
or the chicken skewer man.
Both are so good.
The chicken skewers, one of the best.
This place, though, surprised me a lot.
There can only be one king of this market, though.
So we're gonna do a countdown.
Three, two, one.
Lotus lady.
Yo, the lotus lady is the new king of Tongin Market.
Queen.
Oh, queen.
That's right.
She is the queen.
So why do you say so?
First of all, I like her attitude first, actually,
because I really want to give the point, more point on it.
And then also, she's giving you a lot of variety of the thing.
When we were eating this one, she gave this side dish as well.
Like a service.
She kept asking us if we're cold.
She wanted to warm up our food, all that.
She was extremely nice.
So not just the food was really good,
but she was a very nice person.
All right.
Lotus lady has been crowned the queen of Tongin Market.
Shout out to you.
Now we've covered Gwangjang.
We covered Tongin.
And now it's time for the final stop.
What many call the best market in Korea.
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Okay, we are the third and final market here at Bangwon Market.
What's it known for?
It's kind of far from the very tourist site.
So it is a local market, but even for the foreigner right now,
this market is becoming more famous.
Okay, all right, let's go try it.
Right now, like we are at the fried restaurant.
We're gonna try the cucumber pepper fries.
It's like minced pork with some kind of japchae
with carrot and everything.
And then also they are adding some kind of
spicy chili pepper in it.
So it's really interesting.
I love going to these street food stalls
because you can see how they cook and make the food live.
So they take these stuffed peppers, cucumber peppers,
they toss it in this dry batter
and then they go put it in the wet batter
before they deep fry it.
And I think they do it twice.
So for the extra crispiness.
Looks pretty good.
I'm excited to try it.
This is actually really good japchae.
All right, it is extremely crispy in my hand.
That's my first thing that I'm observing.
Let's try it.
Bite? One bite.
Cheers.
This is so good.
I was really intimidated by the size of this pepper
because I thought it would be really spicy.
But really, it's not.
It's kind of sweet actually.
Yeah, it is.
Because like we call this pepper as a cucumber pepper
which is very, very common in Korea.
Huge, right?
And they stuffed it to the brim.
A mix of tofu, pork, a little bit of carrots.
Carrot and some kind of the glass noodle inside there.
It's like a pepper egg roll.
Very interesting.
We do the sauce too?
Yeah.
We're gonna try the spicy pepper mayo here
which is very, very common in Korea.
Put in here like this.
To me, this is real street food.
It's very savory, extremely juicy.
I think if you're out here in Mangwon,
you gotta go here for sure.
I mean, this is the first spot.
Automatically takes the king.
But we got a lot more spots to go to.
So let's go see who dethrones them.
So Joe, where are you taking me now?
Now we're heading to the tteokgalbi
which is like a pancake.
Okay, I'm excited.
So what exactly is tteokgalbi?
Tteokgalbi is like you just grind it.
So you see at the back,
you see they're grinding all the meat.
Yeah.
With some kind of veggies.
It's like pork and beef?
Like pork.
And then they're gonna smash it a lot to make it shape.
Yeah.
And then she's gonna fry like this.
So it looks like a hamburger patty.
But it's more thicker.
Okay, let's order some.
We have our tteokgalbi here.
Wow, look at the steam coming out of this thing.
First impression, this looks like a hamburger patty.
It is just really thick
and then very caramelized with like
maybe soy sauce or something.
I'll take that back.
Not a hamburger.
This is like a Korean meatball.
Oh my goodness.
Look at how juicy that is.
Inside we have pork and then we have pork belly
and pork neck.
Like chives, carrots, onions, you know.
I think it's caramelized too with some soy sauce.
Let's try it without sauce.
Oh wow.
Wow, that is so good.
You know what's really surprising is how sweet it is.
And it has a little bit of saltiness as well.
But I want to try it with that wasabi sauce too.
Better with the sauce?
Better.
It makes it a little bit more spicy because of the wasabi.
It got that little kick to it.
It's good.
It's a meatball but 10 levels higher.
The Korean way too, man.
But hey, I gotta say though,
I think the king is still the pepper.
This one is better because I'm a meat person.
Okay.
But hey, I'm a texture person.
The cucumber pepper, it had a lot of this savory meat inside.
But there's also crunchy on the outside.
So it's kind of the total package.
Duck galbi is really good
but we got to give it to the cucumber pepper.
All right, let's go on to the next one.
All right, so where are you taking me?
Oh, next one is that we call it datdangjeong.
Oh, what is it?
Just like sauced up chicken?
Yeah, yeah.
Three different types of fried chicken.
So white sweet cream chicken, hot pepper and mayo chicken,
yangnyeom chicken which is like a Korean style seasoning
and then we have a cheese mustard chicken with some tteokbokki.
Okay, so this is our yangnyeom chicken.
I would say this is what represents Korean fried chicken.
Yeah, it is, it is.
You know, for a long time.
It's like a one bite thing.
Bonus, bonus bite.
Let's dig in.
Easy and nice.
It's pretty good.
Not bad, huh?
The flavor is from the sauce
but I didn't get as much chicken as I thought.
That too.
To be honest.
Okay, we have a cheese mustard one here.
This one is very trending, you said, huh?
Yeah, it is.
Why?
When you are ordering the chicken right now,
in the like a one chicken,
this is getting more popular
because like we like to have a more fusion style of chicken.
It's like American style.
Yeah, it is.
White mustard.
Maybe it's because I'm from America.
I like this one a lot.
You don't like it?
Oh, I like it.
It's cheesy.
It's like a fusion.
That one is a lot more crispier than the other one too.
This is good but I wouldn't travel all the way just to eat this.
I think there's some better spots to go to.
For our fourth spot at Mangwon,
where are you taking me, brother?
Next one is one of the best dessert in whole Korea, I can say.
Which we call it hotteok.
Hotteok.
Yeah, let's go.
Wow, look how thick those are.
Almost looks like a fried pancake with the what, stuffing inside?
Yeah.
I think my mom used to make this for me when I was younger.
These ones are all stuffed
and then they go ahead and fry it.
And then the brown sugar almost melts in the dough.
Outside is still hot but inside is super hot.
It's like the whole hot oil is going inside the cookie.
Thank you.
So right here in front of us, we have hotteok.
Very traditional style Korean sweet.
Yeah, it is.
We have three different flavors here.
Oreo, cheese, and just seed.
I'm excited to try this out.
I'm gonna go with the seed.
It's hot, right?
Inside is hot.
It is so sweet but so good at the same time.
I think the nuts really help mellow out the sweetness.
It's everything you see.
It looks extremely crispy on the outside and extremely chewy on the inside.
I noticed a lot of Korean desserts like that.
Oh, it is.
They like to fry their dessert.
Maybe not the healthiest but honestly, I think it's really good.
Oh, yeah.
But we got to go with our savory pick.
Cucumber pepper, you still can't.
But we got one more spot to go to, right?
Yeah, yeah.
All right, let's go.
Wow, look at that.
Perfect.
It's like creme brulee on top.
That looks so good.
I think we saved the best for last.
Yeah, I think so.
Can you smell it?
It's like creme brulee because of the fire.
Oh.
It's a very toasted marshmallow, huh?
And then you got ice cream inside of it.
Yeah, yeah.
Get the best of both worlds.
It's the perfect dessert.
Just again, brother.
This is a sweet tooth's dream.
You get two layers of sweetness.
Inside, ice cream, some cookie.
And then you have a toasted marshmallow outside of that.
Outside of texture, it's quite unique.
It's really good.
And I think it's an Oreo cookie outside too.
I think I got to see a dentist after this.
But hey, really good.
Really good.
Honestly, some things may be a little bit too sweet for me.
Oh.
I know a lot of people that would love this stuff.
I'm more of a savory guy.
So I think I'm gonna stick to my cucumber pepper.
You know, so pork chicken, I think still the king at Mangwon Market.
Fair, right?
Yeah, I agree.
The deal has been secured, my friend.
Let's get it.
We have three different kings.
One from each market.
Tongin, Gwangjang, and Mangwon.
And we're gonna pick the best bite out of all of them.
They're gonna be awarded 1,000,000 won.
All of them were pretty good.
Yeah, it was good.
I think we should establish some criteria for who we're gonna pick.
Yeah.
So what are some things that you're considering for the winner?
I live here, right?
Yeah.
In Korea.
Whenever I go to the local market, I really like to see how friendly they are.
Is that something that's not common?
They're working like 5 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Their life is hard.
So it's really hard to make them smile all the time, right?
So if they are smiling, they're super nice people.
We're gonna judge based off of that.
And obviously, we're on a food channel right now, so the food's gotta be good.
But they also have to be good people.
I think that goes a long way.
Yeah, true.
Let's pick the winner, man.
Between Tongin, Gwangjang, and Mangwon.
Okay, I think I'm ready.
Okay.
Winner in 3, 2, 1...
Tongin!
Tongin?
Yeah, Tongin.
Oh, shoot.
Yeah, Tongin, Tongin, yes.
Why Tongin for you?
Actually, I'm a local guy, so I don't really like to go to the very tourist site.
The Tongin is not famous.
It's not really big, like Mangwon or Gwangjang.
But I like this kind of feel, the mood.
Especially the three vendors were super friendly with us.
So they tried to explain more, you know.
They want to bring us in the shop to make us warm, you know.
They're giving us some kind of the hot, you know, like the warm teas.
And keep explaining us about something, I guess.
And they keep smiling.
It was really, really nice.
To be honest, like Gwangjang and Mangwon, some people are doing it.
But Tongin, yes.
Yeah, I'll say the same thing.
The lotus lady, she was extremely nice.
And we sat down, my hands were freezing.
But she offered to warm up our food that wasn't even from her own stall.
I feel like when you're coming to the Korean markets,
you're trying to experience Korean culture.
Out of all the spots, Tongin is a place that serves temple food.
So it's something that I don't think I could get anywhere else in the world.
I will say the food is very niche.
It's very Korean.
But the lotus lady, she impressed me a lot.
Especially with that sticky rice.
That was amazing.
And I think she deserves to win today.
Do we go reward our winner?
Yes.
Are you ready?
I'm ready.
Let's go.
I'm kind of nervous, man.
Yeah.
I feel like she's not going to let us give it to her.
She's here.
Don't show, don't show.
Yeah, it's okay.
I'm lucky today.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you.
Come again.
Yes.
