Today, I feast.
I really shouldn’t given a variety of issues, but when in Seoul, one should partake of Seoul Food.
I’m saving some macro sightseeing for the pre-paid half-day excursion I booked — more on that tomorrow when I get back from it — but that meant today was a majorly low-key day. My legs are shredded – the quads burn, and I’m limping… but not much more than I was doing before I ran a marathon. Who knows? Maybe the pounding of the running jogged something loose and I’m on the road to recovery.
And maybe I’m delusional.
Maybe it’s both?
But I digress. I started with a “breakfast” at the fabled Gwangang Market. There are several of these large warehouses of stalls housing textiles, wares, and food. I picked this one because it was rated as having the best street food of the few near my AirBNB.
Roaming the cavernous labyrinth of anything and everything, I spied the first item on my “must eat” list — a bindaetteok or mung bean pancake. Unfortunately, the women working the stall were not interested in me sitting at their customer benches for eating and packed it in a to go bag. When I tried to sit one woman flashed a not-so-friendly vampire warning indicating that “no” I wasn’t to stay. So I ate my pancake outside leaning against the Metro station stairs. The ambiance was a bit disappointing; the food was not.
Still a little peckish, I decided to grab one other item… but when I went to another food stall, the woman working it was so friendly and so persistent, she got me to order a few things. I had another taste of gimbap, the seaweed roll of rice and veggies and other things. This was supposedly Mayak Gimbap, or literally narcotic gimbap, a play on how addictive these rolls can be. To be honest, I was a little disappointed in this one after hearing this market had the best product for one jonesin’ for a fix.
However, the item I really wanted to try, tteokbokki or stir fried rice cakes with a sauce that packs a punch. And it did not disappoint. It was heavy and filling and delivious and terrible for me. I’ve sometimes tried to use rice cakes as a viable alternative to snacking on terrible things at home, but I doubt there was ANY “smart, healthy eating” on these things. But I regret nothing.
I couldn’t bring myself to order the Soondae. The word looks like it’d be a delightful ice cream treat… but in Korean, a soondae is actually a blood sausage typically maced by steaming a cow’s or pig’s intestines and stuffing various ingrredients into them. I can do a lot of things… but for some reason without someone egging me on or documenting the experience, I chickened out.
I also skipped the chicken feet.
***
The ghost in the machine of my Samsung S10 brought me to the Samsun D’Light expo hall. This is a marketing wonderland for all things Samsung where you can play with their latest gadgets and see what they are working on for the future. In the latter category: the magic mirror that advises what skin care products you need to look less awful. Maybe that’s a good idea but it also felt super demoralizing.
You also got to answer questions for Samsung to tell you more about, well, you. I’m not sure the individual pieces were right (I’m flexible? Calm? Have you met me, Samsung?!). But I did appreciate their final analysis of who I am:
The other reason I was in this area is that it’s in Gangam. You know, they have their own style in that place? Some might call it a PSY-le. In 2016, they even erected a giant statue to memorialize that 2012 viral hit.
***
Despite being still stuffed from breakfast, I wanted to stop at this dumpling place that literally EVERY foodie blog about a visit to Seoul mentioned. It’s Myeongdong Kyoja and they offer four items on the menu — dumplings, spicy noodles, spicy beef rice, and a soup. I went with the 1000 won dumplings, pricier than ones in other areas but once I had them I understood — they really were delicious. The place was packed but I got a single table pretty quickly. The spicy kimchi was also very good — they kept offering to refill my bowl but while there was a rumbling in my tummy, it wasn’t like Winnie the Pooh’s craving for honey. These were sounds of the stomach bursting at the seams.
There are other places I need to hit tomorrow but for now I can’t imagine eating anything more. It’s 3:15 PM as I write this and I’m *this close* to a food coma.
But before I crash, here’s something: The foam mascot is quite popular in Asia cities I’ve noticed. It seems like every prefecture, every city, every business seems to have a “furry” promoting their brand. Here’s one for the local cat cafe… I’m unclear if they allow smoking inside or if this cat was using a rolled up flyer as a make-shift megaphone. Whatever the case, it IS something:
