South Korea 2022: Mangwon Market, Hongdae, Object & Korean Fried Chicken
day 5
We were so shook to the core that we decided to fly home today. Jokes, can you imagine? If you’re confused go read my last post (lol). First thing we were going to do was go to Mangwon Market, which I think is less popular compared to Gwangjang Market. I think we went here because my sister was looking for a particular stall. Did we find it again? Well you gotta stay tuned
MANGWON MARKET
Mangwon Market gave me more of that market feel only because it was basically a long straight road that was lined with food shops, shops selling fresh produce/seafood/things of that sort and random things in between. Then, it had smaller roads that branched left and right from the main road. Gwangjang Market was more of like a Y shape (?) and then it had streets left and right of those main paths.
Anyway, we got there pretty early so not many stalls were open or they were just starting to open. We randomly went to one stall that was open. Unfortunately they didn’t have any English and none of them spoke English (NOT that I expected them to but I’m painting a story here) but we were able to get by with pointing and gesturing.
Blood sausage and a variety of organs & fishcake soup
Tteokbokki & an assortment of deep fried vegetables
The blood sausage was kind of tasty… the noodles gave it a bouncy, chewy texture. Blood sausage has that sort of metallic taste to it, it wasn’t overpowering but you can definitely taste it. The only thing was the outer skin was sort of tough and that made the whole eating experience… sort of uncomfortable? I don’t know how to describe it. They do give you a bit of spicy salt but I highly recommend getting the tteokbokki as well for the sauce. The assortment of organs was interesting - if you’re squeamish about that kind of stuff, I’d probably avoid these foods - some were tastier than others. It was my mom who mainly wanted this but I tried a few. Again, I recommend dipping it in the tteokbokki sauce. I’m giving all this a 4/10.
The fishcake wasn’t as good as the one we had at Gwangjang Market. Just the flavour, though I can’t remember the specifics anymore to tell you exactly why. I’ll give it a 6/10. The tteokbokki was definitely tastier here. This one had a bit of rice cake cooked in here unlike the one we got at Gwangjang Market. You would expect rice cakes that are thinner to be less chewy than the fat ones right? Yeah, that was my thought but these thin one were actually chewier… and this was spicier, which I prefer. Giving this a solid 7/10 [I swear the Korean mothers and grandmothers here in Canada cook it spicier than sweeter, which I prefer]. The ‘tempura’ they re-deep fried to give it that crisp and make it hot again for us. As with anything deep fried, it was a bit oily but nice and crispy. Again, I recommend getting the tteokbokki because once you dip the tempura in that sauce?? It changes the game - the complexity, the flavour, the pizzaz (lol). Giving that 7/10 as well.
We were walking around looking at some of the other booths. At this point many still weren’t open. There were a lot of fresh seafood places open though. My mom kept saying she wanted to buy some fresh seafood to cook back at our Airbnb but why would we be cooking while we’re on vacation?? I kept seeing this torched marshmallow ice cream all over TikTok and I saw it at this market but I passed on it because how good can it really be (plus it was like $8 CAD…)?
We did see what we came looking for - this Korean sweet pancake stall, or hotteok. It’s essentially a brown sugar filled pancake that is sometimes filled with a mixture of nuts. It is VERY hot and the brown sugar inside is ooey gooey. The outside is crispy because it’s been pan fried in oil - its like almost deep fried but it’s not like swimming in oil more like hovering (lol).
All that to say, we didn’t end up getting it because we would have needed to wait at least a couple hours for it to open and we were not going to do that… Instead we stopped by a Korean fried chicken stall and picked some up. This was actually pretty spicy - it was sweet and quite spicy. It wasn’t crunchy crispy, you know the type you get from chips, probably because it was covered in sauce, it was a wet crunch. The man at the booth also gave us each a piece of rice cake that was dipped into the sauce which was nice. And THIS rice cake was actually very chewy - how I like it.
After all that eating and walking, we needed a drink, some coffee and a place to rest before we continued with our adventure. I remembered when walking from the station to Mangwon Market, we passed by a Paris Baguette. I know this is a very popular chain in Korea and I’ve never been before. I also knew they would have seating of some sort, so I suggested we head over there.
PARIS BAGUETTE
The Paris Baguette we went to was pretty small. It had a small walk around for the bread options - with most on the perimeter and just a few in the middle table. There was also a small cake fridge that had a few refrigerated desserts. And there was just one small table that could seat 4 people in this store. Even though it was small, there was a lot of bread options to pick from - they had typical bakery items like croissants, loaves of bread, tarts but I love how they carried more Asian (of course) flavours like sweet potato, black sesame, and red bean.
We just ordered a cafe latte and picked up some baked goods: we got a sweet potato loaf, a mocha bun and a Korean mochi ball bread? No we didn’t eat this all in one sitting (lol), we saved the loaf for later in the day/another day. The cafe latte was pretty decent - average, it was what you expect from a cafe latte. I ate my Korean mochi bread and it was tasty - the outside was a bit crispier/harder than I’m normally used to but the inside was nice and chewy as I expected. I’ll give it a 6/10 because I would have expected it to be a level above my typical grocery store mochi bread but it was basically the same level. Now with the mocha bun, this was tasty. I only ate a bite of it but it was soft and the outer top layer had the most flavour to it, while the inside was a light, soft bread. I’ll give it 1 more than the Korean mochi bread because the mocha flavour was nice and it was giving something a little more - 7/10.
HONGDAE
It was still pretty early in the day, so our next stop was to Hongdae. There was a shop in the area that I saw on TikTok that apparently sold a lot of K-pop albums, so I knew I had to go. I was honestly hoping to pick up the Blackpink v2 lightstick but spoiler, it was sold out. The store is called “WITH MUU” and it did have a lot of albums. I picked up a Blackpink one and a Stayc one and my sister also picked up a few huge ones that you couldn’t really find at other stores. They also had a lot of other groups’ lightsticks that weren’t sold out, so I think its worth to check it out. Plus of course buying K-pop albums in Korea is much cheaper than back home… The store even had a spot for you to open your albums and check out your photocards.
The Hongdae area has lots of shopping for you: there are tons of clothing and accessory shops - there was this one shop that was PACKED and OVERFLOWING with clothes and decently priced as well but it wasn’t the best quality - lots of food, skincare, they had a huge Daiso here, a POPMART store, and a lot more. Honestly, you could probably spend the whole day here.
My sister was like scouting for famous people - she said the last 2 times she’s been here, she’s seen someone famous. We unfortunately didn’t see anyone famous though while we were walking past this one store, TONS of people were crowded around it outside and we were wondering which famous person must have been here to cause such a crowd. We like did a drive by looking inside but we didn’t see anyone. I think sometime later my sister said it might have been the Running Man cast, they happened to be in the area during the time we were there.
After walking around for a bit, we decided to stop by a café. We kept seeing this one chain A Twosome Place scattered everywhere, so we decided to stop by - and this one happened to be a couple floors, so we knew they would have seating for us.
We just ordered 2 drinks a shine muscat soda and a black sesame latte. Shine muscat we KNOW is good, it has such a unique, powerful, tasty flavour profile… and this was no different. It was nice and bubbly and the drink had chunks of muscat grapes. I 100% recommend you try this drink if you ever stop by A Twosome Place, it’s really good!
The black sesame latte was so unique. I saw it on the menu and I was like ?? they made black sesame into a latte? I love black sesame flavoured things, so I knew I had to try this one. The black sesame flavour wasn’t too strong, it gave a nice nuttiness to the coffee - it was actually quite delicious.
A random note many cafes actually do this system where after you finish ordering, they give you a small handheld device that vibrates when your order is ready to pick up. I love this because I can just go find a seat and rest and then go pick it up when I know it’s ready. Also, some of these places will have a code on your receipt or have a key near the cashier that allows you in the washrooms. Just a heads up if you’re ever in urgent need of a washroom.
OBJECT
Next, we walked towards the Object store which is a bits away from the main Hongdae area. It seemed like it was nestled in a residential area or something. Object is a store that sells a collection of different artists’ well… art. They usually have a featured artist and their work which spans their basement floor and it changes from time to time, so you never know who you’re going to get. When we went, it was an artist that specialized in embroidery and they had a lot of embroidered patches with their artwork.
For me personally, the artwork wasn’t my particular taste so I didn’t pick anything up from this artist but looking around their showroom floor was really cool. The next two floor was a collection of multiple artists’ works just scattered everywhere - there was so much to look at. And I think on the top floor there was a bookstore of some sort?
There were notebooks, stickers, figures, magnets, and so, so much more. I really liked the art from Dinotaeng - their art featured these cute quokka characters and a marshmallow character - honestly, it sounds like such a strange combination but I swear they’re cute! I picked up a set of postcards (I love collecting postcards whenever I travel) and then I got a small plush of Marsh, great for squishing.
I highly recommend stopping by an Object store if you can honestly, you can pick up some really unique things from different Korean artists.
Finally, to the last thing of the day - of course dinner - we have to end it off with dinner before we headed back home. We decided to stop by a popular Korean Fried Chicken chain Kyochon Chicken (in Hongdae of course). Even though it was like 6PM, I swear there were only ever 3 other groups in this place, so it’s not too busy or noisy.
We decided to order 2 flavours of chicken: the soy garlic flavour and the spicy chicken flavour (I’m not saying gochujang because I can’t remember if it was or not). Then we also got a side of casava chips which were dusted with cheese powder, a side salad and of course a beer. The pickled radish came free as a side.
The Korean fried chicken place gives you two big drumsticks for each flavour and then on the bottom, there’s your typical drums and wings. My favourite flavour from the two (and I believe these are the two most popular flavours in that order) was the soy garlic. It had that nice soy/salty flavour that wasn’t too salty and the garlic from the soy garlic just gave it that punch of flavour. The flavour profile isn’t revolutionary and you can probably imagine how it would taste but they do something to it… delicious. I’m giving soy garlic chicken a 8/10. Now, the spicy chicken was actually quite spicy. Especially as you continued to eat more, the spice would build up little by little but it wasn’t like overly spicy. It also had a slight sweetness to it. Giving the spicy chicken a 7/10.
The pickled radish they gave for the free side was… definitely free (lol). You could tell they used older radishes because they were like tougher and more stringy - it wasn’t light and crisp like they should be. The chips were pretty good. Since they were made from casava and not potato, they were much more crispier. If you’ve never eaten casava chips, they are more of a sharp, shattery crunch… not the soft crunch you get from a potato chip. I would have much rather had them just salted rather than covered with cheese powder, 6/10. The side salad was also not giving honestly (lol). Again, it seemed like they were using some older vegetables and they were more hard and stringy, not light and crispy. If you really wanted vegetables, I say get it but I wouldn’t recommend you order it 4/10. And of course, when you eat Korean fried chicken, you have it with a beer. So we got whatever draft beer they were offering - none of us are big alcohol drinkers - so my mom and I shared one. The beer was surprisingly tasty though, it was nice and light so it went great with the fried chicken. I can’t tell you if its hoppy or whatever terms you use to describe beer because none of us drink (LOL). So no rating BUT I will recommend you get beer with your chicken because why not?
Just throwing in one last photo for this post as we were traveling back to our Airbnb. The beautiful golden leaved trees again - they were starting to all fall since we were in Korea in November - it was almost winter. Though most of the days we were there (early to mid November) it was hovering around 15°C.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed this post. May you see someone famous in Hongdae when you travel there! Until the next post…
-Thomas