My first night in Seoul and Korea Part 2/2 – Myeongdong food hunt

This is the second part of my travel stories and photos in Myeongdong, Seoul at night. We talked about the shops selling fashion wears, cosmetic and designers collection that could be found in Myeongdong, in my first part of the story, now I’m sharing the eateries and streets foods that could be found in Myeongdong.

Myeongdong is the most popular and perfect spot for shopaholic and food lovers. Tourists visiting Seoul will come here in droves to buy fashion and cosmetic goods together with souvenirs before they leave Korea. For the local Koreans, while white collar workers pit stop here for shopping and happy hours before hitting the road, students and ladies will also hang out here for shopping, theater watching or cafe dating and chatting. No matter what people are looking for in Myeongdong, eateries and street food stalls play an important role.

After checking in to our hotel, Jean and I headed straight to the centre of Myeongdong to start our food hunt. We bought and carried along one banana milk and one strawberry milk as our drinks, and started trying whatever street foods we spotted along the way. Here are a few of them that I managed to snap photos. The above photo show a typical street cart selling snacks in Korea.

Lucky or unlucky, the first local Korean street food we spotted and tried was this Korean rice cake stews in red hot chilly sauce, the Tteokbokki. Served in paper bowls, Ttekbokki is a Korean rice cake stew, cooked with red hot peppers and onion that give it an unmistakable orange shade.I was lucky to have tried this the most popular street snack in Korea, but I was unlucky in the sense that it is super duper hot and spicy! It made all other snacks I tried later tasteless! Just joking. Not to that extent but still made me drink up my banana milk. 🙂

The next snack we tried was Gaeran Bbang, or the egg cake, another popular snack in Seoul. It is in fact a very simple dish with poured egg being baked together with bread base. I love this as I love eggs. 🙂

There are also elderly baking and selling freshly made candy biscuits. We saw how she made them but did not try. I believe they are very sweet. Aren’t they?

Wow! These are Jean’s favourite, dried shredded squids and fish. Korean love them as much as we do. They buy them for snacks while drinking, or stir fry them into another Korean dish called Ojingeochae bokkeum.

We saw many local people queuing up for this grilled sausages with rice cakes filling, so we queued up also. 🙂 You need to put a lot mustard to get the kick out it!

We drank up our banana milks, spotted this freshly squeezed lemonade later and bought one pack for KW2,500 or USD2.30. (Expensive for such a small pack of lemon juice mixed with Lotte Sprite).

Another cart selling rice cake, fish cake, gyoza and others. We were full as we saw this so we skipped even though there were many local people standing and sitting around is for some quick bite before heading home. This stall stands at the end of Myeongdong, with Lotte Departmental Store being their backdrop.

On top of various street food stalls along the roads in Myeongdong, there are also plenty of restaurants serving local Korean dishes including Samgyeopsal (barbeque meat), Bulgogi (grilled beef), Banchan and Kimchi and others. We did not try them in our first evening in Seoul but don’t worry, we tried most of them later on during our trip and I will share more photos of them here in Travel Feeder.

Below are some other photos taken in and around Myeongdong, showing various restaurants and cafes available.

A juice bar.

This seems to be a famous happy hour spot for the local working class people.

Unexpectedly, we found a Gong Cha Taiwanese pearl milk tea outlet in Myeongdong!

An alley of Myeongdong district lined with small restaurants.

Most shops and street stalls close at 11 PM. Many fashion boutiques close at 10PM. Some others, mostly souvenir shops and restaurants close at midnight. That means we stayed up quite late for our first night in Seoul. 🙂

We slowly crawled back to our hotel, not far away in Myeongdong itself, which was deliberately booked for the reason. That’s my first night in Seoul and Korea. A good start to me. If you wonder how I arrived at Myeongdong after boarding in Incheon International airport, read them in My first night in Seoul and Korea part 1/2.

On the next day, we would explore various tourist spots in Seoul city centre, including Gyeongbokgung, Insadong and Dongdaemun. Come back for the exciting stories and photos! Or you may want to subscribe my email feed for latest story updates.

Have you been to Seoul? Which attractions have you been to? 🙂 – Travel Feeder

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.