Seoul food
Brook Sabin and Radha Engling
Why am I doing this? There are so many delicious things to savour in South Korea – and soon I’m going to tell you all about them – but I still don’t quite know how this happened: I have a wriggling octopus leg in my mouth, suction cups working overtime.
Don’t worry, it’s not alive. San-nakji is a Korean speciality, where fresh octopus is killed and then its legs are served a short time later. A majority of the nerves are in the legs, and they continue to wriggle and suck for some time, even with no brain input. And a whole bowl of the wrigglers just appeared, as part of a food tour.
Back home, the weirdest thing I’ve eaten was a live huhu grub in Hokitika. It was like a rotten cucumber with notes of decaying bacon. It didn’t remotely float my boat.
Since then, on my travels, I’ve become a little more cautious. I’ve politely declined things such as tuna eyeballs, deer penis and Cambodian tarantula.
But somehow, I’ve found myself with a wriggling octopus leg in my mouth. And you need to chew it for many minutes, or it could stick to your throat and kill you.
More on that later, but let’s move to the joyous side of Seoul: soul food. I’m obsessed with places such as Singapore, Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur because of the explosion of flavours you can experience.
Visiting those cities is a safari for the taste buds, around every turn is a new frontier of flavours to explore.
Then, along came Seoul. On my first trip recently, my mouth sizzled, shrieked, swore and salivated as I tried everything I could.
Yes, it ended in wriggling octopus, but before that, there were many things I’d highly recommend.
The dumpling queen
Tucked away in the historic Gwangjang Market, with hundreds of stalls, is Korea’s humble dumpling queen.
In 2007, Cho Yoon-sun started a stall to save her family from financial ruin, after her husband ran up significant debts. Cho’s traditional hand-cut noodles and dumplings were a local hit.
Then last year, Netflix featured Cho on its hit show Street Food, and the queues appeared almost overnight. She’s now firmly the market’s celebrity – turning out thousands of dumplings from her huge steaming pots every day. And the giant smile she serves them up with garnishes the whole experience with happiness.
Korean pancakes
While you’re at the Gwangjang Market, there are a few other things you need to try. The first is the Korean pancake, known as bindae-tteok, and they are flipping good.
The pancakes are made from soaked, ground-up mung beans, adding meat and vegetables, then frying them with a hearty amount of oil.
Yes, in this instance, the humble mung bean has gone from superfood to super (unhealthy) food – but it’s worth the sacrifice.
The pancakes end up tasting like a heavenly hash brown.
Kimbap
Move over sushi, Korea’s version is even tastier.
While the Japanese traditionally serve their rolls with raw fish, kimbap has vegetables, cheese and typically two main items such as beef, pork, ham or kimchi. It’s like a sandwich, made into a sushi roll.
Gordon Ramsay loves kimbap and was famously hand-fed one when he visited the
Gwangjang Market. Now, some vendors try to hand-feed tourists. It can get a little weird, but the taste is worth it.
2D Cafe
I first had a glimpse of this cafe in a photo, and didn’t think it was real. It looks like it was computer-generated.
As I walk inside Cafe Yeonnam-Dong, it’s a little like a parallel universe that happens to serve coffee. Remember those colouring books we used to do as kids? Well, this cafe is like walking through one.
Everything, right down to light switches and cups, is drawn in the same linear pattern, tricking your brain into thinking the scene in front of you has no depth.
The food is pretty expensive nor particularly remarkable, but the experience is undoubtedly why you go. You’ll have trouble convincing your friends the pictures are real.
Korean steamboat
These are fun: a steamboat is a big boiling bowl that sits in the centre of your table. Just put in a few sauces to make a flavoured broth – and select meats and vegetables from the buffet to soak it in. Sounds simple, right?
Well, most steamboat restaurants in Seoul aren’t English-friendly. And that means you often have no idea what you’re putting into your bubbling brew. Was that fish balls, or am I unexpectedly about to create a testicle tagine?
Korean barbecue
Similar to the steamboat, the Korean barbecue has a big sizzling plate on each table to create your own platter.
The meal is typically served with beef, pork or chicken, which you fry on the table and combine
Be in to win with Air New Zealand
Visit the Air New Zealand marquee at the Night Noodle Markets to enter a competition with the chance to win economy flights for two to one of Air New Zealand’s non-stop Asia destinations. The Christchurch Night Noodle Markets will be held at North Hagley Park from 4pm each day, February 6 to 15. See nightnoodlemarkets.nz.
with a selection of vegetables and dipping sauces.
The better restaurants specialise in jeju pork, a smoky flavoured meat from the country’s southern island, described as the ‘‘wagyu of porkdom’’.
Icecreams
On a hot Seoul day, I went to a convenience store and emerged with an icecream shaped like a corn cob. It came complete with corn kernels sprinkled through the dessert, and was unusually delicious.
Novelty icecream is a big deal in Korea, with fish, pig, watermelon and corn-shaped bars to try.
Koreans are also known for their towering soft serves that cost just a few dollars.
San-nakji
So, back to my octopus odyssey.
We’re near the Gwangjang Market, on an Airbnb food experience. Many yummy things have been consumed, but nobody expected to see the plate full of wriggling octopus legs emerge.
In a rare show of testosterone, I picked the biggest leg. As it entered my mouth, our guide put a cautious hand up, saying ‘‘I wouldn’t recommend that for first-timers’’. It was too late, I was past the point of no return.
You see, this can be a little dangerous. When you have an octopus leg wriggling around in your mouth, your natural reaction is to chew and swallow quickly. But, that’s where you can run into problems. If you don’t chew enough, the suction cups on the leg may still work. And they can suck on to your throat and choke you to death.
I really don’t want to be on the front page of a newspaper at home under the headline ‘‘Octopus death – Kiwi dies after leg sucks on to throat’’, so was determined to turn this leg into a puree.
The trouble is, with the largest leg, it’s going to take more than 10 minutes. That’s a long time to regret one’s decisions.
The taste wasn’t that bad – a little like squidgy, sesame-infused rubber. But the little dance it did in my mouth, as its suction cups had a brief flirt with my tongue, was unforgettable, for all the wrong reasons.
After 12 minutes and 32 seconds, it was over. I’d strongly recommend avoiding it or, like me, you may suffer from PTOI – post-traumatic octopus ingestion. For almost everything else in Seoul, it’s time to take your taste buds on holiday.
The writer’s trip was supported by Air New Zealand and Airbnb.