If we were waiting for the ultimate shop-eat-shop-EAT experience, this was definitely it!! I'm probably going to just focus this Korean Experience blogpost on purely food alone - since it's already 11pm and i'm having post-holiday depression. And its only Tuesday tomorrow. :'(
But then again, our most interesting video(s) was taken during one of these gastronomical adventures. *winks*
Day 0:
Reaching Seoul at midnight after a 7 hour budget flight made us ravenous. But in preparation for a whole week of awesome food, plus considering the late hour and night drizzle, we decided to opt for the infamous Korean instant noodles which i heard supposedly taste better as the real thang.
Verdict: Nope, not any better than the ones we have in SG!
Day 1:
Brunch at Doota! food court. One of the 300 shopping complexes in DongDaeMun, where we were staying! :D This was one of the BEST meals ever - no more FoodCourt BBQ beef/pork for me! This was real Bulgogi with Kimchi soup and some kind of very delicious purplish fat rice! The barbequed pork was mixed with super shiok Korean sauce and every mouthful was a burst of flavour.
Best start for the first proper meal in Seoul!
Street Snacks in Myeong Dong:
Calorifically Delicious Grilled Sausages!!
Variety of Street snacks to clog your arteries and tempt your tastebuds to no end!!
Tornado Potato which is 0.5m long and really thick and MSG-fied!! I think that was like half a potato.
Day 1 - Dinner:
GoGung Restaurant in Myeongdong - reknowned for its Traditional Bibimbap!
Before
After
We were so full after a day of snacking we had to share this one big bowl of Bibimbap. The Koreans are really big eaters!!
Day 2:
Brunch at NamDaeMun. The brainy researcher had found on the net about some famous Belt Fish dish that was only sold in this area, so we went to try it.
Belt Fish in spicy broth
Turns out, the fish was really yummy. The flesh was super tasty and soft despite the fierce-looking broth - which was actually made up of white carrot and korean spices. But the prize didn't come without hard work at picking out the soft flesh from the exceptionally bony fish! And the bones were very sharp!
This was just the spine. Both sides of the fish had similar spikes as well!
Taking a pic with the friendly young Ahjumma. haha.
Ok skip to Day 4 coz the rest of Day 2 was taking Kimchi-making lessons and Day 3 was spent fully at Lotte World Theme Park - more later!!
Day 4 - Nami Island:
Authentic Korean Ginseng Chicken - Samgyetang on a rainy day in Nami!
WL's version with abalone - erm..looks almost alive.
Open the chicken up and there's sticky purplish rice in it..super filling but healthy!
We totally felt like chicken-killers after that..one whole chicken each for every customer! Those restaurants must be killing hundreds of chickens everyday. :S
Day 2 - Dinner:
THE ULTIMATE KOREAN DISH ON EARTH. Even better than the first meal of our trip - Sindangdong Tteokbokki.
Even the restaurant name is called "I LOVE SINDANGDONG". I fully agree!! And we have to wear aprons coz the pot was really huge and boiling.
Before
After!!!
You know how Korean instant noodles taste like?? This is 100,000,000 times better. With beef, eggs, cabbage, rice cakes, fish cakes, etc etc thrown in a steaming hot wok. It was so good we went back for dinner on our last day just before our 7 hr Airasia flight back home.
I say, we should do this every CNY instead of boring steamboat eh!! :P
Hokay...time for the most interesting part of the yummy tour...
Day 5 - Noryangjin Fish Market
We bought our own live seafood in the crazy fish market where we nearly kena 'raped'. Both sides of fishmongers kept dragging us to buy seafood from their stalls. Super stressful!!
We opted to buy different types of seafood from different vendors in the end. Probably not a good choice as we could have maybe gotten better price if we bought in bulk. But we just didn't trust any of them.
I was actually quite excited to try this!! Octopus Sashimi! heh heh..
Check out our spread...
Salmon/Octopus sashimi, 12 BBQ prawns and one steamed Alaskan King Crab!
But the funnest part of the meal was of course the squirming Live Octopus.
Will upload the video of WL chewing the suckerful legs on Facebook since this blog post is going to burst!
Alrighty! Final pics of food..
Day 7:
Quite a few Jap-inspired food can be found in Seoul, including Bento sets. But this one we just had to try because it looked (and really tasted) too damn good. Speaks for itself below.
My Katsu-don.
WL's Unagi-don.
Okay end off this crazy long post with my favourite snack of all - Deli Manjoo! Which can be found at selected train stations, including MyeongDong. It's like our Jap Fish-shaped sponge cakes with fillings but OH-SO-MUCH-BETTER!
Haha fat pic coz end of trip already. :'(
Filled with burst-in-your-mouth-sweet-custardy goodness!
Alright time for much-needed rest! I'll post the activities we did later - too much to show and tell! For now, i think i've captured the main part of our awesome Seoul food adventure. Left out King Crab Porridge and Korean BBQ among others, think not that important haha.
Ok goodnight world!
