24-Hour Korean Street Food Like a Local

Annyeong, Doobies! Today, we're going to be eating Korean street food for 24 hours, like a local. Cheers! So today, I'm going to be gorging in street food, strictly for research purposes. So as some of you may know, I am in the process of opening a restaurant, and one of the places that I get the most inspirations from are the streets. And as much as I want to do this at 6 a.m. in the dawn of the morning, I'm not that person. I'm a night owl, and it's 2.15 on March 13th, and it's going to go until March 14th, 2.15. So yeah, I haven't been this excited about a video in so long. Let's go eat! So I ordered the set menu. This place, they do naengmyeon, like cold noodles, barley rice, and also knife noodles. That's their specialty. Set menu is only $8, which I think is a great bang for your buck. It's very different from the bibimbap that you would get in the U.S. because it has that salty, umami, doenjang base. What comes on the set menu is also the knife noodles. We call it knife noodles because it's cut with a knife. So you knead the dough flat out, roll it, and then you cut it. Because it's human-made, the noodles are very irregular, but I think it adds to the charm. Oh, that's really good. For the toppings, it's yubu, which is fried tofu, as well as Chinese chives, some leeks, gim, salty Korean seaweed, and kimchi. And it has a bit of a spicy undertone. And the base of this noodle soup is an anchovy-based broth with dashi. And obviously topped with sesame and sesame oil because we're Korean. These are Korean cold noodles. Traditionally, they're supposed to be made with buckwheat noodles as well, but I think for the price point, these are made with sweet potato starch. It's the same starch used for tapioca pearls, so it has that same bounciness. But because it's so thin, it's not overly chewy or anything. But still, very, very delicious. The sauce is a spicy, sweet, and sour sauce. And again, it looks really red, but it's not spicy. But I don't know. I might be a bit biased. It's not spicy. Actually, the naengmyeon's really good. Okay, my fat ass is still not satiated, so I'm going to get some dumplings. I'm in front of gamhaegol son wangmandu, which translates to gamhaegol hand gigantic dumplings. And they smell so good. You can see the steam just rising, and it's just saturating the entire air. Wow, I am still so, so hungry. Can't wait to have some. And I'll show you how the dumplings are made as well. They were so nice. And the amount of detail and technique that went into crafting this mandu, which ends up being a dollar if you order ten, that's crazy. The amount of labor and love and the technique that goes into it is... A lot of people think that street food is what? Drunk food? Cheap food? But it's not. There's actually a lot of technique into it, and there's a lot to learn. Originated from a lot of the Chinese immigrants that came to Korea. Koreanizing the baozi with more ingredients with noodles and tofu that are cheaper alternatives to then just using meat as well. So it does have a bit of a history kind of embedded in this. Yeah, it's an edible piece of history. She put in an extra freebie because this one was broken. Always nice to have some freebies. Wow, super hot. It's really moist inside. Filling is a bit of pork, some vermicelli noodles, and there's some tofu as well. And that's the one thing that differentiates Korean dumplings from other dumplings in the world. We love to put tofu, and what tofu gives us is this airiness that also absorbs all the juices, so it's amazing. A lot of chives and green onion, and a lot of black pepper to kind of cut away some of the greasiness that comes out from the lard. This is the kimchi version. It's good, but I like the basic one more. It actually does have a kick at the end, but I like the crunchy vegetables and the kimchi that you can taste as well. It's nice, but I just like the other one more. Okay, so for dessert, I got these steamed red bean filling buns, and it's with the yeasted dough. It's mixed with flour, sugar, instant yeast, and milk, which is why it gets this white exterior instead of it being kind of yellowish. Should we get some more bun-sik? Honestly, I could eat more. Should we? Okay. It's been warm all week, and the day I decide to go on a little field trip, it's ******* cold! I needed something warm to warm me up. I'm so happy. I'm going to eat this. It was way too cold to eat the donuts in front of the stall, so I brought it with Yejin, and Yejin squished it. Traditional glutinous rice donut filled with red bean filling, squished. It's a contemporary version. Imagine it's a sphere. It's all in your head. Imagine a mochi that went to heaven, fell from the sky, and dropped in a pool of hot oil, and it got pregnant with a red bean filling. That's what this tastes like. It's so good. It's chewy. It's glutinous. It's oily. And then afterwards, you're left with these oily, sugar-powdered fingers, and it's just like eating hot Cheetos in the middle of the night, and you have red fingers. And this is really the creme de la creme, the piece de resistance. And the next one we have is called guabaegi. It translates to anything that's twisted. This, too, is a Korean version of the Chinese guotiao. Chinese immigrants that came to Korea made an easier version with instant yeast, created this. This is more like a brioche that's been deep-fried. Let's try this. How airy it is? Yeah, it's actually not that airy. I've had better guabaegi than this. It's a bit dense, but usually it's supposed to be really pillowy and big. I think it's also because it's a bit cold that it deflated a bit, or maybe it was Yejin's massage that made it quite dense. I'm so tired right now after all this eating. I'm literally falling into a food coma. Let's check what time it is. It's 4.05. Still 22 more hours to go of this food journey. But for now, we're going to take a break and go back to East Taiwan to edit this footage that you're seeing right now and to exercise so that we can output equals more input. Okay, work is done. It is currently 5.53. And I think it's time for some dinner. I'm craving something spicy and smoky. I know where I'm going to take you. Yejin, to paradise. Okay, end of work. Hello. We're at Chungmuro. I'm so hungry. Looks good. Holy shit. I'm so excited right now. So it's 6 to 12. Two nights out. It's too sweet. It's a bit dangerous. So jukkumi are like baby octopuses and they're right in season when it's spring. It's when it's juiciest, it's fresh, it's super tender. And because you're grilling it on such high heat, the protein kind of recoils back really quickly which is why the tentacles were moving. As soon as you get a nice char on the jukkumi, you take it off grill and you have it. And it's not overcooked, it's delicate. There's a good amount of heat coming through. It's smoky, it's spicy. It's exactly what I was craving. My, my. This is my kind of tentacle porn. Oh my god. That was a great meal. I got a toothpick because I have something stuck in my teeth. I'm ready to eat more. I don't know about you but definitely eating more. Cheers. Tastes like what my mom would make at home. I don't know if this is a Korean thing but literally every Korean mom would have those lock and lock boxes. Strictly that brand too. I'm pretty convinced that lock and lock has some sort of pyramid scheme in Korea because kimchi, marinated ribs, like everything in that. Is it something super special? I would say no but that's almost the charm of it. You come to these places not to be wowed by the avant-garde way of cooking and the technique. It's really to find something homey and nostalgic about it. And that's kind of the point of coming to these old style places that remind me of home and childhood. That's what I love the most. People think that LA galbi denotes from Los Angeles but that's actually not the case. Although it was very very popular in the US because these kinds of cuts are made by just using a chainsaw, I know. It's a bit gruesome but bear with me. It's history. They're much easier to cut. LA galbi comes from the actual scientific name of the part that it's from. I believe it's lateral angular. I'm going to fact check myself. I'm not sure. So LA comes from just lateral like the LA of it. But yeah, that's a fun little fact about LA galbi. So I love these. I really really do love these. Cheers to our friendship. Cheers. I taste sourness. I taste piss. So we are the last man standing. However, a good meal always ends with some carbs and some salt. And I know just the right place to get that. You're much stronger than I thought. Okay. My bad. Cut cut cut. Oh no. Extensions babe, extensions. Luncheon meat. It's too easy to drink because it's too easy. Why is this so delicious right now? I don't know why. My arteries are already clogging in the best way possible. Wow. This is so good. I'm actually tearing up. I love these videos. I hope people like them so that I can keep doing them over and over. It's 9.34. It's been seven hours only. Yet we've eaten so much. I am going to get some sleep so that I can eat more and feel rejuvenated. I don't know what kind of street food I'll be picking up. But we'll see. Maybe I'll be too hungover because I am a bit tipsy. What a place. This is the reason why I love Euljiro so much. And the reason why you should come to Euljiro and experience this in Korea. Let's go home. I'm going to call a cab. Good morning. I am so hungover. It's crazy to think that like about 10 hours ago. But yeah, we're back here again in Euljiro. This time getting some supplies for the restaurant. We are decking out our garden. So we're getting some steel and some perforated boards and all these things. I like that it's all niche, you know. There's not just one big giant Home Depot to go and do this. But it's all small business owners and I like that about this area. Anyways, I'm super hungover. I feel like I'm the walking dead, literally. And I need something hot, boiling, and oily to really wash away the sins from the night before. And we'll go to lunch in just a bit. Four minutes. But we're going to fit it in in four minutes. We ordered the sundae modum. So it's just like a assorted platter of the blood sausage. What's famous here are like the parts that are not really used. The unnecessary parts. And they boil it in a cauldron with all the liquid. It's all the off parts that also goes in here. But they utilize it and it's really fresh. So it's the intestine. This is the liver. This is part of the head that they also have. Some of the ear as well as like the lungs. They're really utilizing the whole pig so that it respects the animal. We also got the soup version of it. If Japan has tonkotsu ramen, Korea has sundae gukbap. So gukbap translates to soup and rice. And what's very customary is to put the entire rice in like this. So that it really absorbs all the sauce. We use all the innards, making sure that everything is utilized. Even to the blood, which is what coagulates this sundae. If you're wondering what it is. It's pig's blood, some vermicelli noodles as well as some rice and vegetables. It's delicious. And what's really important about sundae gukbap is the temperature. The temperature is key. So they do this thing called toryeom. And toryeom is a process of warming up the bowl with a hot broth. You put it in, pour it out, pour it in, pour it out. She did this three times to bring all the sundae and the ingredients up to temperature. As well as the broth and the bowl so that it doesn't get cold once it gets to the table. Because everyone's taste buds are a little different, we like to salt it with a little bit of salted shrimp as well. Don't yuck my arm. It's pretty good. It tastes like tripe. It is 2.57 right now. We went well over 24 hours. It ended up becoming 24 hours and 30 minutes, I guess. 45 minutes. Not the best ring to it. But nevertheless, we are done with this challenge. I'm so happy I got a chance to show you some of the most beloved places here in Korea. And get a taste of what the locals really eat. So I hope to do this again very soon. And I hope you guys like it. And until next time, annyeong doobies! Doobie doobie