Anyeonghaseyo again to our dear readers. No travel will be complete without tasting the local food of the people wherever one travels to. So of course there has to be an article about food during my spring travel too!
I have watched the Korean drama Let's Eat starring Yoon Doo-joon, a singer-actor, and some other artists, and my, my mouth watered and I so wanted to try the food they were eating every episode.
So here I'll be sharing the foods we ate, and also the other foods that Koreans eat in their daily lives. Here we go.
Whenever you eat in a Korean restaurant, they give you 'service'. These are the side dishes for the meal, and these are usually kimchi, bean sprouts or other kind of vegetables. Theyare called 'banchan' in Korean, and they are 'service' because the side dishes are free. And you can always ask for refills if you finish them and they happily give it to you.
Here I post the empty dishes after eating. And this idea also came from the same drama I was referring to above. He's a food blogger in the drama but he never posts pictures of the food he eats but only empty plates after eating. The reason? It means he loved the food! And we loved ours, as evidenced by the empty dishes!
Koreans eat healthy. And if the weather is cold, they always provide free bowl of soup/hot broth even if you don't order one. There is kimbap or rice rolls, mandu or dumplings, and soup and banchan in the picture above. Feeling hungry yet? :-)
A closer look at the kimbap. They are sprinkled with sesame seeds for an added crunch, and they surely tasted delicious! This can be a full meal already.
I had this dumpling soup for lunch as we were on our way to Gangnam and I happily slurped all the soup to warm up my cold tummy.
This is a tteok-bokki stand, and we happily sampled it while walking around. Tteok-bokki is spicy rice cakes. It has a spicy sauce, and fish cakes, boiled eggs and scallions are normally added to it.
This food is not for the faint hearted. These are pupa, and I would not dare eat it. We saw these when we went to Yeouido Park and I just had to take a picture because they just deserved to be taken a picture of! Ha ha ha! Some of the kids in the show The Return of Superman love eating these!
These are desserts, and since I'm not fond of sweets, I just took a picture for sharing purposes. :-)
This food stall was also in Yeouido, and the foods on sale were: pupa in one container, snails in another, hotdogs, the ones in cups are sweet potato fries. The flat ones I'm not quite sure. We bought the safest ones, ha ha!
These are local delicacies, made of sticky rice. For 1,000KRW a pack, they are definitely a bargain. We bought some too and they were good!
This was in Myeongdong, the famous street food haven in Seoul. These are fried potatoes. And of course we tried them. Yum!
Pickled banchan. Zucchini, kimchi,spinach and one more thing I cannot recognize. They all tasted good though.
And since we were in Seoul, we had to try eating samgyeupsal (pork belly) the way Koreans do it in dramas we've so often seen! Put a piece of meat on a lettuce leaf, put in some kimchi and other things, wrap it and put it in your mouth. Are you salivating like me? :-)
I think these may be fried fish cakes. It could also be hotdogs coated in something. Not sure.
These are a variety of fried foods- sweet potato fries, dried squid, and other things. Myeongdong.
Another cart full of native delicacies. They are actually very affordable, quite frankly.
These are called ppopgi in Korean, old fashioned sugar candies. What they do is they melt the sugar over fire, mix it with something until it caramelizes and then shape it to whatever shape they want. Sweet of course.
This was our last dinner in Seoul. Beef and pork plus lots and lots of side dishes equals a very full tummy.
Hotdog wrapped in bacon. Plus lots of ketchup. Would have been even better if there's spicy sauce. Street food at its best! Ha ha.
Can you try guessing what food is this? It's actually soft ice cream, and yes, it is shaped like that, so that you just bite the thing off. Did we try it? You bet!
I was right! These are indeed hotdogs wrapped in fish cake, some even with dried laver.
I bought almonds to bring home. We also tried the black sesame seeds. Yum.
These are more expensive than the ones above. This was in Insadong.
This is called dragon beard's candy. It is made from sugar and maltose syrup, as well as peanuts, desiccated coconuts and sesame seeds. The process of making it involves repetitive pulling and stretching the dough until there are thin stripes that resemble a beard, hence the name. It was very sweet though.
The rest of the pictures are pictures of food I saw at the Lotte Department Store grocery. There were loads and loads of interesting food stuff only Koreans know how to eat. :-)
A lot of their food are pickled or preserved and these are used in various recipes all year round.
This looks like beans and the other one is dried tiny anchovies. The anchovies can just be eaten as is as a side dish.
These are radishes that are round. Radishes can be pickled, made into kimchi, they use it in soups and other dishes.
Various types of seaweed, usually used in soups and salads as well.
This is dried pollack. This is one way of preserving fish, and they use it in soups and other dishes.
Various types of kimchi.
Spiced anchovies.
Spring onion kimchi. I know. They have so many varieties.
Bottled and packed kimchi for travel. My friend bought one for pasalubong when we went in autumn.
Not sure what this is but I'm sure its spicy based on the color.
They must love their anchovies as there are so many kinds.
Veggies that I have only seen in Korea so far. Don't know what they are.
More kimchi variety.
Various types of pickled vegetables.
More of the same.
You may also like to read more travel articles here.
Comments
Post a Comment