Seoul’s Gwangjang Market: Night Food Tour Review
Much of the market is made up of narrow alleys with stalls lining both sides
Tucked deep into the streets of Seoul lies Gwangjang Market, one of the oldest street markets in South Korea. As you wind through the bustling alleys, you’ll find merchants selling everything from clothing to home goods, and of course, lots and lots of food. If you’re a fan of Netflix’s series Street Food Asia, you may recognize this market and especially the packed stall that sells dumplings and knife-cut noodles owned by Cho Yonsoon, and you’ll most likely find yourself lost amongst the vast array of options that await you as you aimlessly stroll through, trying to decide what to eat.
One of the best ways to combat the analysis paralysis that is so prevalent in situations like this is to book a food tour. On our tour of the market, we were led by a knowledgeable and outgoing guide who already knew the best places in the market and was able to take us to locations that served amazing food that we most likely wouldn’t have tried on our own.
Crosne, also called Chinese artichoke, is a root vegetable that looks an awful lot like an insect larvae
The first stop we made to gently ease us into the bustling market was to a shop that sells banchan. If you’ve ever been to a Korean restaurant before, you probably noticed that your meal was served alongside 15 or so tiny dishes of different sides; this is banchan. Typically, these are things like kimchi, marinated tofu, bean sprouts, or any variety of pickled vegetable that you can imagine. Our guide was really excited for us to try two in particular. The first was a crosne, also known as a Chinese artichoke. This is the root of an herb, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at it! She had us all convinced that this was the larvae of some exotic insect, and only after someone bravely took a bite (you can bet that it was NOT me) did she let us in on the joke. The next thing she had us tried looked an awful lot like a tiny crab covered in a spicy sauce, but after the root vegetable we were all a little more skeptical. Turns out, it actually was a tiny little crab, deep-fried, covered in spicy sauce, and intended to be eaten whole! I gotta say, I didn’t particularly love this one; eating a crab shell and all is strange and I had a hard time getting over it, but it did taste pretty good!
After our banchan experience, we moved a little further into the belly of the beast to try a very popular Korean street food: tteokbokki. These are chewy rice cakes that are absolutely slathered in a bright red sauce made of peppers. These have become fairly easy to find in the US and other places where there’s a prominent Korean expat community, especially in larger cities, so give them a try if you ever come across them. The rice cakes are the perfect texture of chewy and gooey, and the sauce had a very nice heat to it. Be careful though, these are usually served blisteringly hot, so let them cool down a little before you dig in. Otherwise you’ll burn your mouth and you won’t be able to taste any of the delicious food that awaits you deeper in the market, and that would truly be a shame.
Now, I want to just take a moment here to really drive the point home, this market was pretty busy. People were milling about, eating their dinners, or buying food to take home to their families. But as we left the tteokbokki stall and started heading towards our next delicious destination, we began to notice that there was one spot in the market that was A LOT busier. Turns out, becoming an international sensation and appearing on a Netflix show will really drive people towards your business. At least that was the case for Cho Yonsoon, who was steadily slinging steaming bowls of knife-cut noodles to throngs of diners. And as luck would have it, we were on our way to have noodles thrown our way. This is a situation where being part of a tour group really worked in our favor. Even though the stall was crowded, our host had coordinated with the owner so that we were seated as soon as we got there without having to wait long at all.
Cho Yonsoon sells some of the best traditional knife-cut noodles in all of Gwangjang Market. So good, in fact, that Netflix featured her in the Seoul episode of their series Street Food: Asia
And I gotta say, this lady works fast. As soon as we sat down, we were given sliced onions marinated in a soy sauce-vinegar mixture (which has become my favorite banchan that I’ve had), which was quickly followed by a plate of mandu (Korean dumplings). Cho makes two different types of these dumplings, one filled with kimchi, the other with minced pork and onions. While we were enjoying our dumplings, the star of the show arrived; the kalguksu (knife-cut noodles). We had just watched her rolling out the dough and slicing the noodles by hand, so we knew these were super fresh. The noodles were served in a rich broth made from anchovies and topped with kelp. I’m not usually a fan of seaweed being part of my meals, and anchovies and I have had a tenuous relationship at best, but something about this delightful concoction just tasted so good that I didn’t really even care. If you have access to Netflix, check out the Seoul episode of Street Food: Asia to meet Cho and learn how she went from growing up in impoverished post-war South Korea to selling the best kalguksu in Gwangjang Market.
There’s something about potatoes that is so simple, and yet so wonderful, and it’s no different here. Our next stop was all about gamjajeon, which are pancakes made from grated potatoes, kinda like Swiss rosti or American hash browns. Pan seared until golden brown, they’re traditionally made of just potatoes, but like any traditional food they’ve been adapted and added to and now you can find them with all sorts of vegetables mixed in, like mushrooms or onions, and served with a dipping sauce made from soy sauce and vinegar (which is a combination I’m noticing shows up a lot in Korean cuisine, and I’m here for it). We got to try two of the most popular offerings: traditional plain potato and potato and onions mixed together. It was also at this stall where we were introduced to our first taste of traditional Korean alcohol. Makgeolli, one of Korea’s oldest alcoholic drinks, is an unpasteurized, unfiltered, and slightly fizzy beverage made from rice, which gives it a slightly sweet flavor and a cloudy white appearance. I was hesitant to give this a try at first, but once I gave it a taste I had two or three servings because it turned out to be so delicious and unlike anything I have ever tried before. You can find makgeolli at Korean stores overseas (I’ve seen here in the US, at least), but the stuff that’s imported has to be pasteurized which robs it of some of it’s more complex flavors. Probably still pretty delicious, but if you want it how it’s meant to be enjoyed, you’ll have to go to Korea.
Once we left the land of fried potatoes and arrived at our next location, I was glad I had already had a couple drinks, because we were about to go way beyond my comfort zone, and I needed all the help I could get. We ducked into a restaurant in a back alley of the market, and after our guide got the kitchen working on our next round of food, they brought beer and soju to the table and taught us a couple of drinking games (Soju is a Korean liquor that’s traditionally distilled from rice, but these days it can be made from any of several different starchy grains. It’s clear and flavorless and drinks a lot like vodka, though it typically has less alcohol). I’m gonna be honest, I don’t really remember the games, all I know is that I had to chug a beer, and things were going great. That was, until the food arrived. Set before us was a plate of sannakji – freshly prepared octopus tentacles that, when seasoned with salt and sesame oil, wriggle around like they’re still alive. This delicacy is notorious, not because it’s raw fish or that it’s still moving (although that is creepy), but rather because a non-zero number of people die every year from eating this because the suckers on the tentacles can stick in your throat and cause choking! Cut to me, excessively chewing on this thing to make sure there was nothing left to get stuck. And in all honesty, once you get past the slight danger factor, it tasted pretty good. But the dish that came out next was the most challenging by far.
Yukhoe is a dish made of raw beef served over a pile of sliced pears with a raw egg on top. Now, in the United States, we’ve been told time and time again not to eat raw beef or raw eggs, or else we run the risk of contracting some bacteria and dying of a terrible foodborne illness. As it turns out however, if the meat is super fresh and comes from a trusted source known for high quality, there’s very little chance of that happening. Now was this beef super fresh and from a high-quality supplier? I can’t say, but when else was I going to get the opportunity to try something like this?? So, I put my brave big boy face on and got a great big bite in my chopsticks, and down the hatch it went. And I am SO glad I did it, because, in my opinion, it turned out to be the tastiest thing we had all night. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I went back for another couple bites.
After a night of eating everything in sight, dessert is in order. Fortunately, there was one last stop on our whirlwind food adventure. The final stall served us kkwabaegi, which is dough twisted into a stick and deep fried and coated in sugar. These are fairly prevalent in many Asian cuisines in one form or another: in fact, if you’ve been to a Chinese buffet and had the “Chinese donuts,” you already have a pretty good idea of what these taste like. Sweet, sugary, and deep fried, this was quite possibly the best way to wrap up a night of eating new foods and making new friends.
This night tour of Seoul’s Gwangjang Market has made me a firm believer in the value of a good tour. There is no way that we would have been able to eat all the amazing things we did if we had just tried to navigate the market on our own. But our personable and outgoing guide took us by the hand (figuratively) and led us to try some great food that we wouldn’t have been brave enough to try without them. All this is to say, if you get the opportunity to go on a food tour with a local that knows their stuff, give it a try. Chances are, you’re going to try some new and exciting dishes that you didn’t even know were out there.
Interested in taking your own food tour with an experienced local guide? Check out the same one we went on here!
