DELICIOUS Korean Street Food 🇰🇷 YUMMY Hotteok, Mandu, live Octopus & more! Gwangjang Market, Seoul

Guys, welcome back. Today we're in Seoul, South Korea and this is Gwangjang Market, the go-to spot in Seoul for all foodies. There's a very exciting atmosphere in the air. Let's go check out what's good to eat. First up, right at the entrance of the market area, there is a dedicated dumpling store and it's actually full of people inside so we're going to try some dumplings. Which is your most popular? Shrimp dumplings. So let's give it a go. Okay, so we have here shrimp dumplings. Instead of the typical dumpling shape, they've just been wrapped in dumpling skin and I think there's like a whole shrimp in there and what looks like some chives or spring onions. Let's try. So fresh. Actually it has mince and shrimp. Nice. Very nice. And this Korean soy sauce is very light, it's got a very delicate taste, I love it. Hello! Pickled radish. Yeah, very nice. Skin very thin. Yeah, thin skin is always the mark of a good dumpling in Asia. A little bit sour-ish I think. I think maybe it's the vinegar? Maybe vinegar. Soy sauce vinegar? Yeah. Very nice, yeah? Basically, in this market there seems to be this whole row of shops. On this row, it seems like most of the stalls are actually selling the same menu and they're all very well patronised. I suppose the same good recipes work, whichever stall you're at. Okay, so we settled down at this place and we're going to be very adventurous and take four dishes from this one shop. He just did like a disturbance test just to make sure that the octopus is alive. Okay, very much alive, very much alive. Fresh. You can see this nice lady chopping up the tentacles and they're still moving around. I'm not sure how I feel about the upcoming tasting experience. Okay, so this is the dish of live octopus. This cost us 15,000 won, which is about 15 Sing dollars. And as you can see, the whole point of it is that the tentacles are still moving. So, you apparently have to chew them really thoroughly before you swallow. Otherwise, they might get stuck in your esophagus and you die of choking. I'm scared, so Vitaly is going to try the octopus. I always want to try it. Okay. Like sashimi? Is it moving on your tongue? It was very small pieces. I don't feel it's moving. Okay, I will try a little bit bigger. With sauce and seaweed. Yeah, okay. You can feel it's trying to suck to your tongue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The suction pads, right? Quite interesting, but tastes very nice. It's like, just like sashimi. This too. I chewed for quite a long time, but it's still moving. He's got to chew it carefully. Otherwise, we might lose him. If something happens, I love you. I'm alive. Oh my god, you can still see it wiggling around on the plate. This piece especially seems very, very active. So, that's not going to be my first piece. You'll take something small and slightly less active. Okay, this looks very small and innocuous. It seems very slimy. Okay, can you see? So, I've got a bit of seaweed, a bit of sauce and a small piece of tentacle. That doesn't seem so active. Okay, I will chew. I think the piece I have has no suction pads. So, it's just like Japanese octopus sashimi. Very nice. That makes me feel bolder. Okay, let's try. So, it's got all these sesame oil and sesame seeds on the raw octopus thing. And I think that gives it a very, very nice sesame seed flavour. This one seems terribly active. Oh no. It's very, very active. Go, go, go. Okay, okay, okay. I'm going, I'm going. This one's got suction pads. Chew. It's so weird. Okay, food that moves while you're trying to eat it is very weird. Okay, I was a bit nervous before trying this. But actually, it's very nice. Very nice. But good chewing. Take a guess. What is this? Pig skin. Cost us 10,000 won for this pig. This should be very good too. Very excited. I think there's some kind of like red Korean sauce on it. Probably spicy. Let's go. It's got a very thick porky broiled flavour. Very nice. The sauce, the gravy has a lot of flavour in it. I like it. Very chewy. Very thick. Hopefully full of collagen. I need collagen. Nice. But I love sauce. It's not spicy. It's a little bit sweet. Comforting. So far, this requires more chewing than the octopus sashimi bits. Okay, the quintessential Korean delicacy. Tteokbokki. Korean rice cakes. In their spicy gochujang sauce. Okay, this is always good. Love it. This costs 3,000 as well. Famous tteokbokki. Is this their national dish or something? Looks good. It does look very good. Yeah, very fatty. Very gigantic. As usual, smothered in red gochujang sauce. Very big. It's just very warm, soft, chewy. Okay, the real stuff in Korea definitely rocks the packaged stuff you buy overseas. This is so soft and fresh. Very nice. Okay. This is the Korean fish cake soup. So it was on the stick. They took it off, chopped it up, put it in some broth. This costs 3,000 Korean won and it looks and smells very good. Yay. So I'm really looking forward to this, you know. I think generally super spicy things is not my style. But this looks very nice and comforting. Korean fish cake in some broth. Mmm. Love. Very nice. And of course in Korea we cannot escape to try gimbap. Very famous. This will be our first gimbap since we're in Korea, actually. So like bits of rice, a little bit of maybe marinated carrot perhaps, wrapped in seaweed, sprinkled with sesame seeds. They say here we have some wasabi sauce. Yeah. It's going. Wow. Yeah, very nice. Wasabi sauce, very wasabi. But I guess it's raw wasabi, not some powder. Very, very nice. Very fresh. Mayak Gimbap at Gwangjang Market is such an institution that apparently even Gordon Ramsay enjoyed this delicacy when he visited back in 2017. Okay, so we've had like five different dishes here at one stall. But actually I think along this whole row, there are maybe like about eight stalls and they seem to be all selling a similar menu. So you can just kind of like pick one that looks kind of like good and popular, what you like. And sit down and you can try like, you know, however many dishes you want at that same place. But now we're going to finish up this five small little plates. And then move on to try more other things. I'm excited. Okay, so now I get it. So actually the different lanes have different stalls. And when they're all in a row, they sell similar things. But actually the different lanes, the different stalls have a different menu. So this one is more concentrated on assorted pancakes and like fresh seafood sashimi, including the live octopus. Over there, it was more of the tteokbokki and pig skin and gimbap stuff that we ate. Covered in soybean flour. Thank you. Okay, I finally scored a hotteok. Yeah, so I've seen this on TV and you know, been told about this. This is supposed to be very, very good. And it's quite interesting they give you in a cup. So I think that's easy to eat. This one's got like cinnamon nut grain and brown sugar in it. And then it's covered in a soy powder. Very nice, very nice. Yeah, very nice. Cinnamon taste. Chewy, right? Less chewy than tteokbokki. But yeah. This is basically a sweet snack, which is always my thing. But I like it. Happy! Okay, so these mung bean pancakes are supposed to be like a thing here at this market. And there are so many different vendors. I don't know, there must be like, I don't know, 30 vendors selling the pancakes. So it's very hard to choose. We ended up here. But like as Vitaly said, I think this ajumma is quite famous because like she's been on TV and there are posters of her here. Well, let's try mung bean pancakes. So, right. Gonna dip in a bit of sauce and... Why? Smells strange. Strange? Very interesting. I think this is a meal unto itself. It's gonna be very filling. I don't know what to say. Strange. Crispy. Like the name suggests, it's made with mung bean. And then they deep fry it. Nice consistency. It's very interesting taste. We got this too. Chili and crab sticks. It's some big chili and inside I guess it's some mince. But let's try it. Interesting. I think it's inside some cheesy stuff. A little bit salty. Very interesting. They look big and spicy but I hope they are not spicy. So, these chilies go with a bit of this nice soy sauce mixture. So, they're stuffed peppers. Not quite sure what's in the center but it's quite nice. So, you've got a nice long green pepper that's been emptied out in the center and stuffed with some kind of stuffing, maybe meat, maybe cheese. And then they dipped it in egg and they deep fried it on the outside. Not spicy, quite tasty. Okay, here goes with the crab sticks. Fried in egg with some veggies. I think it's like long beans or green beans packed with crab sticks in a line and then fried with egg. It's quite nice. This is nice stuff because she put an egg and let it fry because without egg it looks like this. And look, after she cooked for us, I will eat one more. I think Korea is a heaven for especially people who like savoury snacks because a lot of the taste profiles of the food is not the sweet side, it's the savoury side. But it's very interesting, the varieties they've come up with. That's it! We hope you enjoyed our food adventures. Yeah, it was so fun exploring Gwangjang Market this morning. It was a very interesting gourmet experience for us, definitely a foodie place. If you like food, this is the place to come and try the variety that Korean cuisine has to offer. Well, don't forget to click like and subscribe. And stay tuned for our next adventures somewhere else. See you, bye bye!