Pojangmacha (tent bar) in Seoul!

Just got back from Seoul last night, had a good night sleep, and now already missing the food there. I want a haejangguk (hangover soup) for breakfast!

For now I want to share one of my favorite eating experience in Korea. Pojangmacha! It’s a small tent that can be on wheels or street stalls. If you walk around at certain neighbourhood in Seoul, you will be more than likely to find a few of these. It’s almost impossible to add most of these locations on Maps though, considering they’re everywhere and not considered a registered business. Don’t let that stop you though. Just follow your instinct and pick a random one, you’ll be fine

Look at the image above though! Doesn’t that just bring you happiness? Eating in open air, accompanied with the people you care about, just having a good time. Maybe even too good, if there are 1 or 2 (or 10) bottles of soju involved :stuck_out_tongue: In any case, you’ll find varieties of Korean street food such as hotteok, gimbap, tteokbokki, sundae in these kind of stalls (I’ll make a separate post about it later). The one pictured above is the sit down type, where the stalls set up tables and chairs outside for customers. Another variation is the one where it’s just a stand, and people can just stand there and eat quickly, like pictured below

Most of the time you get the fish broth in a cup by default no matter how much you order. Imagine drinking that in a cold winter night. Ahhhh. Price is very inexpensive as well. For the fish stick (odeng), it’s 500 won (USD 50 cents) per stick, for example. I seriously love the eating experiences here. Most of the ajummas (aunties) here don’t speak English though, so get prepared to point your way to order your food. If needed, ask her to type in the amount on your phone.

Well, that’s it for now. I will share other things from my recent to Korea sporadically this week :slight_smile:

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Tteokbokki and the fish cakes (with the soup) are the best! I had it in the middle of winter (which is infamously cold in Seoul) before and the feeling is simply indescribable - will do anything to go back again!

Another spicy snack that I missed - meat skewers!

So it’s similar to the Japanese yatai, then…

I’ve seen those stalls in several K-dorama (although I watch mainly Japanese ones :D). And I absolutely love a good tteokbokki!

@YanniY I actually thought about scheduling another trip to Korea so I can enjoy the odeng and fish soup outside… haha. Oh and the chicken skewer, do you mean this one? :stuck_out_tongue: So spicy and delicious… I wish my stomach could take more.

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Tteeokbokki in Korea is so much better than the ones I had in US or Indonesia @LuisRG . So spicy and flavorful. I also did find they used a lot of MSG on their food though :stuck_out_tongue:

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@IvanY wrote:

Tteeokbokki in Korea is so much better than the ones I had in US or Indonesia @LuisRG . So spicy and flavorful. I also did find they used a lot of MSG on their food though :stuck_out_tongue:


So a lot of fake umami, then :)))

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@LuisRG LOL!

@iyudhi That’s right! yeah it tends to get really spicy!

yeah, MSG is commonly used I think but oh well, I will close one eye to that.

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I feel very inspired to visit Seoul after this post! I can almost taste that street food :slight_smile:

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@Corrie You will like what’s coming then. I’m preparing a post just for all the street food I ate while I was there :slight_smile: