And what did we encounter there?  Let’s start with the winter weather wonder of fish bread:

Named for the fish-shape of the mold they’re baked in, these sweet pancakes can resemble carp, goldfish, shrimp, or even at one memorable yet disturbing stand in Ssamzie Gil, a pile of poo. A thin sweet batter similar to pancake batter is poured into cast-iron mold over a gas grill. As the batter begins to cook, sweet red bean paste (팥: pat) is added, then the mold is closed and flipped, sealing the filling in the center of a crispy, gooey treat. The pancake base can be any number of flours, but is usually wheat flower. If you’re looking for a different texture or have wheat allergies, look for places that use sweet rice flour (찹쌀: chapssal). Some places have become experimental with fillings as well, and if you hunt around you’ll find sweet potato (고구마: goguma), chou cream (슈크림: shyukeurim), chestnut (밤: bam), and even savory fillings like chili-cheese.

Ready for a Fatman favorite?

Mmmm, 쥐포. While dried and pressed filefish roasted over an open flame may not sound like the sweetest of treats, trust us: this is the epitome of sweet and salty snacking. Forget kettle corn and sunchips – jwipo are where it’s at. Forget the popcorn and pick some up at the carts near Seoul Cinema before you head inside to watch a film. If that’s not caloric enough for you, it can also be deep fried into a crispy treat (shown here alongside deep fried sweet potato sticks)

As long as we’re talking about sea-born street food, let’s take a minute and discuss 오징어:

Delicious squid strips are put on a hot press with yummy butter. Oh, the chewy, gooey joy of it all! But as we trotted along through the town we started longing for something a little more substantial.

These chicken feet in spicy pepper sauce may be chewy and gristly, but they’re also packed with flavor. While chicken feet have very little in terms of actual flesh, they have a distinctive texture and taste from the skin, tendon, and bone that makes them toothsome and gelatinous. The spicy sauce might overwhelm some meats, but it makes a great counterpoint to the chicken feet.
It’s not just chicken feet to greet the street diner though.

Korean cooking has ways to use just about every part of the animals they eat, including sweetbreads, tripe, skin, and brains. Most of these get served up in specialty restaurants, but some of them grill up in the many tents that line the roads. Mixed with some vegetables and sauce, these foods appear later in the evening as more and more boozy businessmen and women pour into the streets looking for the right counterpoint to all that soju they’re metabolizing.

Fried foods and grilled meat and fish are also popular ways to help absorb all that alcohol. Fortifying the stomach helps keep all that business going. Without chicken feet and kimchi pancakes, who knows? The economy of South Korea could grind to a halt.
Some treats are twenty-four hour appropriate though . . .

Walking down Jogno you might wonder, “Who is Kim Dok-soon and why does she own every stand on the street?”
Haha, Fatman made a funny. Gim-ddeok-sun stands serve the holy trinity of street snacks: Gimbap, ddeokpokki, and sundae. The wise will have all three, and perhaps some assorted fried foods mixed together so that everything absorbs the spicy-sweet ddeokpokki sauce.  Those tender, toothy bits of rice cake simmer together with a sugar and pepper powder blend to become something so spicy that the heat in your mouth will have you sweating like it’s the dog days of summer.

The richness of the sundae especially benefits from the ddeokpokki sauce, which helps balance it out and keep it from feeling greasy or fatty. Meanwhile the sundae helps tone down the burn of the chili, as does the rice in the gimbap and the crunch of the twigim gives a textural contrast that can’t be beat. Most places will have squid legs, sweet potato, dumplings, and fritters made of mixed julienne vegetables on the menu.

If all you want is some gimbap, try one of the places that specialize in miniature sized rolls. Refreshing and surprisingly filling, you can try a variety of fillings to discover your ideal taste wrapped in roasted laver and rice.

Virtually every street stall will have at least one food in common:

Behold, the 국물 and 오댕! This fishy broth hits the spot better than anything on a chilly winter day. Each stand will tend to have their own recipe, and so as you eat your way down the road you can sample dozens of different kinds. The richest tasting use crab as the base flavor while others rely on anchovies or other fish, and places work to outdo each other with fancy broths using everything from mussels to pumpkin to jujube in addition to the usual onion, spring onion, and radish that flavor the ordinary broth. If you need to warm up fast, a cup of this is almost always complimentary when you order, no matter what you’re standing and eating. Use it to wash down your ddeokpokki or enhance your odeng. Speaking of which, don’t pass up these tender fish patties – they’re a reliable way to satisfy your craving for something mild but savory. Infused with the complex flavors of a good gukmul, the embracing softness of the patty is a luxurious way to warm up.

But what to do if you need a meal that’s a bit more mobile? No problem! Just grab some meat on a stick (닭꼬치: dalkggochi)!

Chicken skewers come in a wide variety of sauces, both spicy and not, and a range of toppings from mayonnaise to cheese powder to garlic salt. Sticks keep getting longer and longer, up to thirty centimeters! Yowza, that’s a lot of stick! Most are given a quick parboil before being grilled, then sauced, and then given a final run over the coals before the stick of hot, juicy chicken bits is handed over to the customer.
If you’re looking for for some fusion in your food, you could definitely do worse than the hot bar. Made from a mysterious combination of fish paste, vegetables, and flour, this savory mash is formed into hot-dog shapes and then deep fried for a completely portable flavor delivery system.

We have a lot of different wraps, toppings, and fillings to decorate our bar with, including bacon, hot dogs, roasted seaweed, and sesame leaves. Could it get any better? But let’s keep moving. Maybe it’s time for something a bit more basic, a bit more natural, a bit more fundamental. Maybe it’s time for roasted chestnuts.

Floury and hot from the roaster, chestnuts (밤: bam) in Korea are categorized by how they’re cooked and served to you. Some chestnut vendors will roast them over an open fire (just like the Christmas carol) and others tumble them with heated stones. “Nude” chestnuts don’t belong in a brothel – they’re simply peeled for you. Also take a crack at roasted ginko (은행: eunheng) nuts when they’re in season, because those nibbles are a bitter and tender delicacy.
Eventually, everybody’s sweet tooth catches up to them. Fatman and friends are no exception, and soon we were hunting down honeyed foods to sooth the savage beasts. First on our list of must-haves were those deep fried delights, hoddeok (호떡).

These yeasty doughnuts are stuffed with sugar, cinnamon, and often nuts that turn to oozy caramel when they’re fried and pressed on a grill. The crispy-chewy dough surrounds a molten core that’s burn the tongue but delight the tastebuds. Again, each stand will have its own special recipe, using everything from peanuts to black sesame seeds in the caramel, while green tea, corn, pumpkin and vegetables have showed up in the risen dough. If that’s not sweet enough for you though, we have another suggestion.

뽑기 (bbobki)  is one of the most basic and lasting of Korean street foods. All you need to do to make your own is to heat sugar until it begins to burn, stirring all the while. Then dump it out on a cool, smooth surface to shape and decorate as you wish. It’s not as much fun though as getting it made for you on the streets. See if you can eat it and keep the designs intact!

Yeot (엿) is a traditional confection made from boiling steamed rice, corn, or other malted grain. Once the syrup has been boiled long enough, it will solidify when cooled and form a sweet, sticky taffy that ranges from chewy to crunchy in texture. It can be chipped or chiseled into the desired form, and some varieties have extra goodness inside the taffy or the candy itself is rolled in fun bits like peanuts or sesame seeds. The most famous variety is a pumpkin flavored variety from the island of Ulleungdo.
But if you really want to eat to impress, try one of the newer innovations in street sweets: Honey candy.

Ggultarae (꿀타래) stem from royal court cuisine, but have made their way into the lives of the hoi polloi. This might well be the best show in town, as the complicated process of making them is narrated by multilingual chorus as solidified honey is stretched and separated into fine threads by being pulled through cornstarch, then wrapped around nut fillings. Intensely sweet, they have a distinctive texture that slowly turns from dry and almost crackling to gooey and chewy with a finishing bit of crunch from the nuts. Look for these guys mostly along Insadong, although franchises have started cropping up all over the place, so you can try all the different flavors (almond, peanut, and walnut). And a note to the ladies: watch out, the guys making this stuff are all flirts!
Many thanks to Zen Kimchi, Chef Hickey, and the many friends who joined Fatman for this eating excursion. Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty more in the future

우리 음식일기 쓰는 사람, 고무신 걸의 미국 오래곤주 포트랜드시의 포장마차 사진:

Finding the perfect 떡볶이 / ddeokpokki is a long and arduous task. Aren’t you glad the Fatman is dedicating the time and effort to finding it for you? 맛있는 떡볶이를 찾으려면 많은 시간과 노력이 필요하다. Fatman이 여러분을 위해서 직접 발벗고 나섰다는 것이 기쁘지 않은가?

There’s a surprising diversity in the tastes of those plump little rice cakes as they chill in their chili sauces. Al dente or soft and oozy? Long, short, or figure-8 shaped? Spicy, tangy, sweet . . . each sauce has its own special flavor. How chewy should the odeng (fish paste patties) be, what shape, and how much of it? Are you an afficionado of the hard-boiled egg in your dish? How many vegetables should lurk in the mix? 동그스름한 작은 떡으로 만드는 요리이지만 조리하는 동안 여러 가지 차이점이 생길 수 있다. 적당히 딱딱하거나 부드럽게 혹은 완전히 익히거나. 길거나 짧게 혹은 8자 모양이거나. 맵거나 톡 쏘는 맛이거나 혹은 달콤하거나… 각각의 소스는 제각기 특별한 맛을 지니고 있다. 어묵(생선을 잘게 다져 만든 음식)을 얼마나 익힐 것인가, 어떤 모양으로 자를 것인가, 그리고 얼마나 넣을 것인가? 달걀은 완숙으로 할 것인가? 얼마나 많은 야채를 넣을 것인가?

Then there’s the comforting conundrum of side-dishes. Deep fried delights, sundae (blood sausage), and kimbap (gimbap: rice and assorted vegetables and meat rolled in seaweed) are the usual suspects, lined up at the counter and waiting for you to point the finger of fate. Which will you consume? 이제 함께 곁들여서 먹을 음식에 대해 정할 차례이다. 보통 튀김, 순대 그리고 김밥 정도를 선호한다. 자~ 이제 당신은 어떤 선택을 할 것인가?

현선이네 매콤단콤한 떡볶이 (Hyeonseoninae Mekomdankomhan Ddeokpokki: Hyeonseon’s Spicy-Sweet Sauced Ricecakes) is one of the more famous street stalls near Yongsan Station. The street that runs between Yongsan Station and the Shin (new) Yongsan bus stop is chock-a-block full of pojangmacha (street stalls) dedicated to ddeokpokki. There’s lots to chose from around here, but people head to Hyeonseoninae for one reason: To have the taste buds scorched right off their poor tongues. “현선이네 매콤달콤한 떡볶이는 용산역 부근에서 유명한 포장마차이다. 용산역과 신용산 버스 정거장 사이의 길은 떡볶이를 파는 포장마차로 장사진을 이룬다. 하지만 사람들은 “현선이네”로 간다. 이유는 단 한가지이다. 바로 특별한 맛 때문이다.

Hyeonseon ought to be sued for false advertising. A plate of ddeokpokki here seems ordinary, even spare and without excessive sweetness or spiciness . . . at first. There’s no egg or vegetables, no sesame leaves to dress it up. Other than sauce and ddeok, only a few large pieces of odeng liven things up. But that’s alright, because this doesn’t need anything to liven up. The first few bites will seem innocuous enough, but after the first minute or two a strange, blistering, burning sensation will start to crawl through your mouth. You’ll be in the midst of appreciating the still-chewy texture of the ddeok and the softness of the odeng when suddenly it hits you. By the time you realize exactly how spicy it really is, it’s too late. It’s a slow building but sharp-burning: Chilihead heaven!

그곳의 떡볶이 한 접시는 그저 평범해 보인다. 아니, 초라해 보이기까지 하다. 달걀이나 야채도 없고, 장식용 깻잎 같은 것도 전혀 없다. 단지 소스와 떡, 몇 개의 어묵뿐이다. 하지만 괜찮다. 더 이상 어떤 것도 필요하지 않기 때문이다. 처음 씹었을 때에는 별다른 차이가 없었지만 1~2분이 지난 후에는, 조금은 색다르고 타오르는 듯한 느낌이 입안 가득 퍼졌다. 아마도 여러분이 쫄깃쫄깃한 떡과 부드러운 어묵의 맛에 대해 감탄하고 있을 때, 그러한 느낌이 찾아들 것이다. 얼마나 매운지 느꼈을 때에는 이미 늦은 것이다. 천천히 밀려들지만 한 순간 날카롭게 타오르는 듯한 매운맛.

Sundae, twigim (in this case a large assortment of deep fried delights including squid, kimbap, sweet potato, and mixed vegetables), and kimbap are all available if you still have functioning taste buds. The sundae is very good: Toothy but tender, in natural casings, and most importantly without any greasiness. Twigim are heavily battered and crispy, but none of it matters because the old hands here all recommend mixing them together into the ddeokpokki. Kimbap here is a bland and pedestrian food, also meant to be dipped in the sauce. None of them are sufficient to provide any starchy or greasy relief from the fire in your mouth, so you might as well mix it in and take it like a Fatman.

매운 떡볶이를 한 입 먹은 후에도 아직 여러분의 미각세포가 정상적으로 작동한다면, 순대, 튀김(오징어, 김밥, 고구마, 야채튀김) 그리고 김밥 모두 함께 먹기에 더 없이 좋다. 순대는 매우 맛있다. 거칠지만 연한 순대 피(껍질)로 순대를 만드는데, 여기에는 어떠한 기름기도 들어가지 않는다. 튀김은 부서지기 쉽지만 떡볶이 소스에 담가서 먹는 것이 제 맛이기 때문에 이것은 전혀 문제가 되지 않는다. 김밥은 평범한 편인데 이 또한 떡볶이 소스에 찍어 먹는 것이 좋다. 앞서 말한 음식은 여러분의 불이 난 입을 달래기에 그렇게 효과적이지 않기 때문에, 떡볶이만 먹지 말고, Fatman처럼 적당히 섞어서 먹기 바란다.

This kind of heat is only for those with a masochistic streak. Fatman dined among a sea of young people, office workers, and neighborhood folk, all of whom were drenched in sweat while their noses ran like spigots. There is no dignity in eating this – only the triumph of knowing you lived through the experience.

이런 매운맛은 마조히즘 성향의 사람을 위한 것인가 생각될 정도이다. Fatman이 여러 사람들에게 이것을 대접한 적이 있는데, 모두 땀과 콧물로 범벅이 된 채로 떡볶이를 먹었다. 이 떡볶이를 먹을 때는 위엄이란 없다. 오직 ‘무사히 먹었다’ 정도의 성취감 뿐이다.

Hyeonseoninae is a fairly big stall, with some limited sit-down dining behind the cook stand. The food (except for sundae and kimbap) is appropriate for people who abstain from red meat, but not for those who avoid fish. A full set, with sundae, twigim, and ddeokpokki for two runs 7500원, and a half serving is 4500원. Go, and enjoy that burn!

‘현선이네’ 가게는 꽤 큰 편이다. 얼마 안되지만 조리하는 곳 뒤편에, 앉아서 먹을 수 있는 자리도 마련돼 있다. 순대와 김밥을 제외한 다른 음식은 붉은색 육류를 피하는 사람에게 좋다. 하지만 생선을 피하는 사람에게는 그다지 좋지 않다. 순대, 튀김, 떡볶이까지 다 해서 2인분에 7500원이고 1인분에는 4500원이다. 지금 그 불타는 맛을 직접 느껴보라!

Street Snack Extra: As long as you’re in the neighborhood, Fatman recommends heading down towards the bus stop. Across and down the street from Hyeonseoninae’s is a jeontong hoddeok (“traditional” or baked, caramel-filled pancake) stand on the corner called Beobeul Hoddeok. Instead of the deep fried version, the old-fashioned form of this dessert is baked in a round mold. They can turn into crunchy, flavorless nightmares, but this lady makes them the right way: Each one is hand-made from her homemade dough and filled with her secret sugar and spice mixture (the only things she admitted to Fatman were sugar, cinnamon powder, and black sesame seeds and . . . the rest remains secret!), and hand-shaped before she tucks it tenderly into the mold. The irregular looking results were a revelation: The exterior was floury and chewy at the outsides and only reached shattering crispness near the very center, where the sugar and spice mix was in perfect proportion. Instead of a mass of gooey burned sugar in a cracker, this was airy and lightly sweet. 1 for 700원, 2 for 1000원.

그 밖의 먹을거리 : 근처에 산다면 버스 정류장 쪽으로 가 볼 것을 추천한다. “현선이네”에서 길을 건너 쭉 내려가다 보면, 모퉁이에 “버블호떡”이라고 불리는 전통호떡집이 있다. 많이 튀긴 “현대식”과는 달리, 이 곳의 호떡은 예전방식대로 동그란 틀에서 구워진다. 그러자 바삭바삭하기만 하고 맛있어 보이지 않는 모양이 되었다. 그러나 그것은 틀린 방식이 아니었다. 호떡은 이 곳 주인이 집에서 직접 만든 그녀만의 비밀 설탕과 양념이 든 반죽으로 만들어진다(주인이 Fatman에게 알려준 재료는 설탕, 시나몬 가루, 검은깨 씨.. 나머지는 비밀이다). 맛은 울퉁불퉁 못생긴 겉모습이 놀라울 정도였다. 겉에는 가루가 묻어있고 적당히 딱딱했고, 주인만의 비밀 양념이 있는 가운데 부분은 매우 바삭바삭하며 맛이 좋았다. 끈적끈적 달라붙는 맛 대신, 이 호떡은 가벼운 달콤함이랄까? 한 개에 700원이고 두 개에는 1000원이다.

Korean Translation by: Maxzest