TacoCat’s Travels #247 (Seoul): A Culinary Journey in Famous Gwangjang Market 😋

taco.cat (67)in TravelFeed • 2 months ago

Hey Hive!

If you missed the last few posts, I've been sharing about our first trip to Seoul back in Nov 2022! We were waiting post-covid for everyone to go on their holidays before taking a big one and we finally decided to go on our honeymoon! It's also our first time experiencing Fall so we were double excited!

Last week, we finished exploring the Gyeongbokgung Palace and learned some very interesting but tragic history about the place.

After walking around most of the palace, we left to go back to our hop-on hop-off bus adventure! On the way we did see some cool standees that were either for events that happened or for tourists to take photos with, which was lovely either way.

We took the bus back to Seoul station since we wanted to grab a bite to eat for lunch.

In hindsight this was a mistake since we should've just gone to the market we wanted to visit to eat. But we were hungry and weren't sure where else we would go so we went to check out the station first.

We saw some cute KaKao Friends characters at the station, with main character Ryan as a train conductor!

Seoul Station has a big department store connected to it called Lotte Outlets so we figured there would be some food places there we could check out.

There were some fancy restaurants but they looked too highbrow for us.

We even came across an art gallery right next to the fancy-looking restaurants.

I'm not sure if the gallery was fanart or actual art pieces from a collection though since I saw some Snoopy and Mario paintings. They looked really cool nonetheless.

We found something a little more within our taste and price range in the mall - the food court. Ironic that we had to walk past all the luxury stores and fancy restaurants to get here though. But we figured this was better than trying a restaurant that we potentially would not enjoy.

This food court was also huge! There were so many stalls and there was a board showing all the stalls and their menus.

The food court also had some window seats that offered a nice view of the city. But it was a little warm there so we chose to sit inside.

We sat near the stalls we chose to buy from, and we chose two different stalls but they were next to each other so it was convenient.

But instead of ordering from the stall itself like normal food courts, you had to go to the counter near the entrance to order and indicate the stall and dish number you wanted. I guess that's what the big board of menus was for.

I felt like having some rice that didn't come with a stew since we've been having that a lot. So I tried this omurice from one of the more Western-looking stalls.

I've never tried Korean omurice before so I was curious how it would taste. It came garnished with some greens, cheese and walnuts as well. And since it was Korean it also came with sides of pickled vegetables and kimchi.

The inside was quite cheesy and creamy and it tasted pretty good! I did find the sauce a bit too tomatoey for my taste though. I think it was a demi glace sauce of sorts but it was quite sweet as well. I expected it to be more savoury but it was still nice.

Sean went for his favourite Korean spicy tofu stew from the neighbouring stall selling all kinds of different stews. But since there was an option for red rice he decided to try that to be a little healthier.

His soup was really tasty; it was spicy and savoury, our favourite combination! I mixed a little of his soup with my cheesy omurice and it actually matched really well and gave me that little bit of spice that I wanted.

They were simple meals at the food court but they were satisfying and pretty affordable so no complaints. After that we went back onto the bus!

It was a cloudy day but thankfully it wasn't raining anymore. We managed to see the big European-like station building from afar which definitely looked out of place in Korea imo.

We didn't want to risk going anywhere too outdoorsy today since it looked like it could rain at any moment. There were some other sights on the route of the city tour bus but the main one we wanted to see was Gwangjang Market which is pretty famous.

The name Gwangjang means "to gather from afar and keep altogether." Gwangjang Market was the first permanent market in Korea that began as a small trading hub where merchants brought in goods from nearby regions. It has since grown into a large wholesale market selling a variety of goods, including fabrics, imported goods, groceries, dried fish, traditional goods, and more.

I think this is probably one of the most popular places in Seoul since it was packed with tourists! The food section of the market was definitely the most crowded with everyone wanting to sample all the local snacks.

This stall selling tteokbokki and gimbap was right up front and attracted quite a crowd.

I'm not really sure why there were so many flags hanging up top but I guess just to show how international the place was?

The market was jam packed with people and stalls it was quite hard to walk for the most part. We tried hard to get through the crowd without being separated.

Once we were past the food section it was pretty much empty after that with most stalls selling dried goods and some selling fresh kimchi and seafood.

We tried to walk on the other side of the food section with less of a crowd, and we came across one of the famous snacks we saw online.

This is a popular street snack in Korea called Bindae-tteok, or mungbean pancake. We saw so many stalls here grinding the mungbeans, vegetables and meat into a batter where its then ladled into a griddle of hot oil and deep fried.

One pancake looked so huge, and since we just had lunch I wasn't sure if I could finish it so we bought one to share and even the half looked really big.

Tbh it didn't taste that fantastic to me. I thought it would be more flavourful but it didn't taste like it was seasoned at all. It was thick and a little crispy but taste-wise it was pretty bland. I feel like it would taste a lot better if there was some spicy sauce drizzled on top or something.

We saw a TV crew filming a lady buying so many of the mungbean pancakes. I wonder if it was also for a travel show since we know Netflix also filmed a show here showcasing all the different food in Gwangjang Market.

Speaking of Netflix, the lady whose dumpling noodle stall was featured in the Netflix series, Street Food: Asia was here and she had a long line of customers wanting to check out her stall and try her noodles!

We were already pretty full from lunch and the mungbean pancake which was very filling but since we were here we felt like we should at least try it. There was quite a queue anyway so we could wait.

Her menu features home-made noodle soup with either hand-pulled dough or noodles and/or dumplings.

They also have cold buckwheat noodles and cold soybean soup. Since we're not a fan of cold noodles we just decided to try the noodles and dumplings.

We ended up waiting quite a while before we were seated since we had to wait for customers to be done. But thankfully we weren't hungry so it wasn't too bad.

About 10 minutes after we were seated our dumplings were served! We ordered a mix of the regular and spicy kimchi dumplings.

The dumplings had some meat and chives in them which tasted pretty good, dipped in the soy sauce. The inside was a little dry though. The kimchi dumplings were better with some spice to them but it was a pleasant spice.

We also ordered a bowl of the Sliced Rice Cake Soup which came topped with seaweed and some vegetables. It looked like flat macaroni to me.

For some reason it also came with noodles so we were pretty glad that we got to try both. They tasted the same since it was the same dough but had slightly different textures.

The rice cakes had more of a bouncy texture than the noodles and Sean said it reminded him of mee hoon kueh, or hand-torn noodles back home in Singapore.

I thought the noodles were good and the soup was nice and light; slightly savoury with the seaweed.

But to be honest, I don't think it was worth queuing half an hour for. There were also a lot of other stalls selling the same thing so I'm not sure what's so special about this particular stall. It felt a little unfair that this lady's stall was the one that got famous because of Netflix.

We walked around the market and noticed that most of the stalls there were basically either selling dumpling noodle soup or the mungbean pancake. There wasn't much else being offered or sold. We were a little disappointed at the variety and how the stalls could compete with each other selling the exact same thing in the same place.

There were some other classic Korean dishes like tteokbokki and japchae but they seemed pretty standard and we were full so we didn't try any more.

We did see some cute doggos though, like this white pommy!

And this very happy looking pup sitting on his owner's lap!

They even got filmed and interviewed by the TV crew we saw earlier! How cute!

We saw another fluffy dog being very well loved by this older couple at one of the stalls. He looked so cute!

We did come across a souvenir shop in the market which sold wine and a bunch of other snacks. It was empty so it was a nice breather to get away from the crowd.

There were also some restaurants in the market selling more of the same thing, but also some raw beef which looked kinda dicey.

It was cool to see and experience an authentic Korean street market though, with everyone sitting around and eating at the tables, enjoying themselves.

The stall owners/chefs all look hard at work. It must be quite difficult to stand and cook all day and tend to customers at the same time.

Outside the market, we saw some stalls selling dessert and it smelled pretty good! These stuffed walnut pastries in particular smelled of freshly baked cookies.

The menu said they were walnut-shaped cookies although they looked like pastries. They also had different fillings like custard, cheese and red bean.

They also sold the famous Castella cake which is originally from Japan but we had yet to try it.

We saw the staff member slice the huge castella cake right out of the oven and it was huge!

We were thinking of buying it but we were way too full to buy a cake and even the sliced pieces looked pretty big. So we decided to try the walnut cookies instead. The minimum was a 10 piece and we tried the original custard flavour.

It was actually not as sweet as I thought it was going to be. It did have a strong walnut taste since there was crushed walnuts inside it but it wasn't unpleasant. The custard was quite gooey but it was still nice. Sean wasn't a fan though but I thought it was good.

We were so stuffed from all the food so with our snack in hand, we made our way back to the bus stop, where we came across another cute doggo in a stroller!

We bid farewell to Gwangjang Market which was interesting but also kinda meh. The food may not have been for us but I can see why this is a popular place since it showcases authentic Korean food and their market dining experience.