I like traveling. I'll dedicate an entire post to how it all started but for now, know that that's the second reason why I've come to amass photos, which led me to start this account.
Very soon, I'll be visiting one of my favorite cities again (and I only say "one of" to sound as impartial as possible because Seoul is secretly my favorite city), and I figured I'd share an interesting experience based on the last one. Of course, this post is called Part N because heaven knows how many parts this will have.
There had been no scarcity of things to do while I was in Seoul for 2 times that I've visited. And when I've run out of unique stuff to do and places to visit, I don't mind visiting some of the places I've visited again. From museums, to shopping, to all things touristy and everything in between, visiting Seoul once on a 4-5 day vacation just isnt enough. Of course, aside from visiting a new place, it's the food that gets me excited to travel.
During the last trip, we signed up for a walking food tour of the city and every part of it was worth it and more.
We started at the head office of the company that organizes it (O'Ngo), with a cooking demonstration of a Korean dish. Our tour guide for the session, who's also a chef by profession, prepared a simple dish called Pajeon (pancake made of flour, green onions and some other veggies). It was an interesting way to open a tour and one that definitely got us excited for the rest of the trip. According to our guide, Pajeon is versatile enough to be either a side dish or a main course and good enough to be eaten at any part of the day...all depending on how heartily the dish is prepared.
On the way to our first stop we saw several stands selling rice cakes in all shapes and forms. Integral to the culture, our guide said (see the disclaimer there) that they use rice cakes in most important celebration. Pretty much like how we bring wine (or pansit or cake when we visit friends' houses). We got to try some. It's like our kakanin.
The first stop was a street food stall that served ddeokbokki, fishcakes, and fried stuff tempura style. Food stalls like these are scattered all over Seoul and the food choices are extremely diverse.The food is cheap (1000-5000 won) and filling. Ddeokbokki is possibly the most ubiquitous of all these street foods. It's rice cake that's simmering in a pool of chilli pepper sauce. Depending on preference, other ingredients may include beef, mung bean sprouts, mushrooms etc. But even in it's most basic form of rice cake in a pool of the spicy sauce, the dish has full of character.
We went on to visit a local wet market. I love wet markets. I think wet markets reflect the soul of the food culture of a place. The one we went to was not as ummm, wet, as what I'm used to. Of course, I'm comparing it to our wet markets here...the type that gets really wet.
We walked. and walked. and walked. At every opportunity, Marcus would explain stuff about Korean food culture. Until we got to this place. This place serves mandu and pork buns. Mandu is pretty much like our siomai and well, pork buns are pork buns (there's also the sweet variety, that has red beans instead of pork).
These were awesome mandu, the reddish one has kimchi filling and the other one has pork and green onions. While similar in form to the siomai (similar, not the same), the flavor profile is entirely different. In a good way.
After that stop, we were already full. Let's recap. Pajeon, ddeokbokki, fish cakes, fried vegetables and prawn tempura, rice cakes, mandu, pork buns and red bean buns. We needed to walk it off before the final stop.
Insa-dong was the perfect place to walk things off. the area is well known to be a cultural and traditional street to both locals and foreign visitors. The area can get so crowded that it's sometimes closed off to vehicular traffic. You'd find all sorts of knick knacks, and bric-a-brac in the area.
Once we thought we've walked off everything we had just eaten, it was off to lunch and the final stop of the tour. Korean barbecue. We walked through winding alleys and obscure roads just to get to the restaurant. Needless to say, I can't describe where it's at. Some of the alleys were so narrow, I was amazed at how people can actually walk through them. Seriously. Too bad I don't have photos to show.
The restaurant's atmosphere was as traditional as it gets. And the food was great! Look at that spread. I can't remember half of what I ate. I do remember that there was kimchi, grilled pork, grilled beef, grilled mushrooms, rice (very interesting because it was cooked with nuts and raisins in a bamboo with small piece of coal on top), pickled everything, more kimchi and some ummm foliage...to wrap things up with, of course. I can't say that it was one of the best Korean barbecue meals we've had, only because every Korean barbecue meal we ate was as good as it gets. The banchan varies from one restaurant to another but one thing is constant, and that there's no scarcity in flavors in every meal and you always walk away feeling satisfied but not ridiculously full.
That meal wrapped up the tour. We were full. We didnt want to move.
We walked around some more after we ate to look at some more touristy stuff, but that's for another post.
No comments:
Post a Comment