An early start from Hong Kong and a small portion of Cathay Pacific noodles left us ravenous after the train journey from Incheon airport so we headed straight for Seoul’s Myeongdong street food market for a snack. We were not disappointed.
In this UNESCO world heritage street the stalls hustle for trade among the endless shops selling skincare. Korea is very partial to skin treatments and gadgets and, in case you’ve been on Venus for the last ten years, the nation’s multi-step skincare regimes have conquered the beauty world. Here in Myeongdong Street, smaller brands jostle for position with the more stately Innisfree and Etude House, and tempt customers in by giving away free skincare masks that promise to magic away your pores, pimples and wrinkles. Evangelical Christians right in the middle of this melee sang Korean hymns and damned the faithless to Hell. But today I was in the market neither for skincare nor for God.
My impression is that Koreans are falling over themselves with enthusiasm to absorb the best food from the whole world and give it their own twist. Two rows of umpteen tiny stalls, each with their unique selling proposition. One street stall vendor refused to allow me to snap her wares, all too conscious of her secret recipes being fed to the competition. There were cellophane noodles with vegetables and meat; streamed corn cobs; honey-laced mung bean pancakes; fried eggs on golden toast. The largest, fattest ceps I’d ever seen waited to be sautéd and served with soy and chilli sauce.
One stall pushed butter-roasted prawns and abalone. One side of your order sizzles on an infernally hot griddle while the vendor attacks the other side with a blow torch for a matter of seconds and there it is: your buttery prawn shashlik, moist and perfectly coooked. Food competed with other food to see who could look best on a stick: I saw chips on sticks; baby octopuses on sticks; potato spirals on sticks; kebabs of lamb and chicken and pork on sticks; sausages wrapped in cheese; cheese wrapped in sausages: all on sticks. There were lots of sticks and, to my surprise for an East Asian nation, a lot of cheese. Who can say why?
Hundreds of oranges waited their turn to be squeezed into nutritious juice and serve as some sort of foil to the oily, salty, umami-rich offerings in Myeongdong Street. We plumped for strawberry mochis, the sweet, luscious fruit wrapped in unctuous red bean paste before being encased in a babysoft blanket of riceflour. These are among the best strawberries I’ve ever tasted. You get the impression that Koreans take their food very seriously and that all right is simply not good enough for them; they have to offer BETTER.
I wolfed down my the Korean-style Gyoza, the crispy dumpling shell ceding its place immediately to a tender filling of pork, kimchi and glass noodles. I wanted to taste the huge mussel shells filled with diced scallops and cheese ready for the griddle but my calorie-conscious self gave me a strict-talking to. It’s going to be a small green salad for supper. And lots of water.
