Myeongdong is a heaven for exploring Seoul’s street food. The options are plenty and there are a few carts that sell the same type street food. Food prices ranges from 1000won (~ less than 1 USD) to 6000won (~ 6 USD). There are no available seating around the food carts and you will find most people would either stand behind the stall or by the side to enjoy their food or like me, choose to walk and eat at the same time. I didn’t pay attention to what time the food vendors start their business but every night you will find them around unless it’s raining. I do notice the food vendors moved around a bit so they may not be in the same spot every night.

Street food may not for everyone because people worry about hygiene but so far the ones we had tried in Seoul are pretty clean and we didn’t have any problems. i love street food because it’s cheap and one of the best way to explore the country’s food culture.

Below are some of the street food we tried in Myeongdong!

This is fried chicken coated with sweet and spicy sauce. In the cup there are also rice cakes called Tteokbokki 떡볶이 or Ddeokbokki depending on your romanization of the Korean word. This cost about 5500won and its quite a good portion size too.

Hotbar is one of the most common and popular street snacks in Seoul. its actually fish mince/paste rolled into a bar and deep fried. It’s very filling and comes in many different variety. There’s the plain one where there’s nothing inserted in the middle. You can find all sorts of different types of food such as crabstick and sausage inserted in the middle. There’s other types where squid and chicken are minced into the fish paste and deep fried. There’s also seaweed coated hotbar as well. The vendor will ask if you would like yours cut up for easy eating or would you prefer to eat it on a stick instead. Lots of different types of sauces to accompany your hotbar. This hotbar cost 3000won.

Another very common and popular snack among the tourist is the potato spiral or potato tornado. The food vendor puts a potato into a machine that cuts up the potato into spirals and use a stick to pierce through the potato. This then goes into the deep fryer for a few minutes and once it’s done, the vendor coats it with powder seasoning of your choice such as cheese. 3000won for one. You can see a few of these street vendors in Myeongdong.

Eggbread is also know as Gyeran-ppang (계란빵). This is a sweet bread made with light fluffy dough and steamed with an egg on the inside. Some vendors have added nuts and seeds to their version, while some have added sugar to the bread. It is very tasty and cost only between 1500-2000won. Great for a cold day.

We had been hunting this little fellow down in our entire trip in South Korea but failed to find the Bungeoppang 붕어빵, or what Mr G called the “custard fishy” , It’s normally in the shape of a fish and filled with super delicious red bean paste. It’s cooked almost like a pancake or waffle where you pour the mix into the grill pan and let it cook for a few minutes before adding the paste in, which could be red bean, custard or jam. More mix is then added to the grill and the other half of the grill is shut tight to cook the whole pastry. We had these before while in Japan and it had since left Mr G with amazing memories. Unfortunately after asking around for this, we had been told by several people this is only available during winter time.

There’s so much more street food which I will cover in a different post but here’s the few you will definitely find in Myeongdong. Enjoy!!