Seoul Food Part 1

1. Dakhanmari @ Hongik Exit 3 

First Korea meal right after landing our feet in Seoul after checking in our hotel. The Korean chicken soup served with rice cake, knife-cut wheat flour noodles (kalguksu) and their speciality sauce with chilli paste, onion together with chives and mustard to add on. We ordered 2 sets of 2 people portion cost 25000 won each total bill come up with an amount of 50000 won. Most of the Korean restaurant would not let you shared the portion, most of the order need to be tally to the seat you occupied regardless of the portion size. The recommended method to eat this dish is on the desk guiding you the correct way to enjoy the portion. First, you boil the chicken and let it soak in the soup, savour the tender chicken with the sauce and kimchi. The noodles are to be put in the last so that the bland noodles could absorb all the goodness in the soup and become rich in flavour.

2. Bindaetteok and Mayak Gimbap @ Gwangjang Market

The two most famous dishes here in Gwangjang Market, didn't get to try the famous raw beef with egg yolk because aunt doesn't eat beef because of religion. 

Mung bean pancake is a Korean style pancake made from ground mung beans and some other seasoning frying it in a pan. I personally like the crispness on the outside. It's definitely in the must try food list in Gwangjang Market. Whereas the gimbap tasted so so only for me. After checked through the internet, there's actually a famous stall that sells only mayak gimbap, probably you can try that and tell me if it's good.

Bindaetteok (Mung bean pancake) 4000won

Mayak Gimbap 3000won

3. Tteokbokki, Kkochi Eomuk and Sikhye @ Gwangjang Market

The spicy Korean soft rice cake here is thick with the sweet spicy sauce and is best to be eaten with the traditional sweet Korean rice drink which balances up the taste. Both turns out as a good combination. But out of all, I love this stall fish cake the most, the normal flavour ones, spicy ones is a bit spicy for me, you can see from the red soup. The fish cakes here expand and soften with time as its soak in the soup. But the texture of it is on point, I don't know how to explain this, it's like most of the food will turn squishy after soaking in hot water for a long time like those guan dong zhu which I don't really like but this is good!

Tteokbokki (rice cake) 2000won

Kkochi eomuk (spicy fish cake) 1000won

Kkochi eomuk (fish cake) 1000won

Sikhye (sweet rice drink) 1000won

4. Ginseng Chicken Soup @ Tosokchon Samgyetang

Here's a famous restaurant listed in the must eat list when you are in Seoul located near Gyeongbokgung Station. Korea believed that ginseng is good for health. We visit here after Gyeongbokgung palace. As this is a famous restaurant among the tourist, so the queue is required but service is fast though and they had like Chinese speaking waiter. As you entered the main door you will see bottles with ginseng for sale at 10000won, acting also as a beautiful decoration. This restaurant theme of Hanok style giving you an authentic feel of Korea. Dining at a low long table with cushion sitting on the floor. They don't have much selection and we ordered almost everything on the menu.

They provide one cup of ginseng liquor and tea, ginseng tea is refillable from the jar. The ginseng taste is very strong from the liquor. I don't favour ginseng that much so that small cup is just enough for me.

Both side dishes kkakdugi (radish kimchi) and baechu kimchi (cabbage kimchi) are good. It is self-refillable from two tubs placed on every table.

This is the famous Tosokchon ginseng Korean black chicken (silky fowl) soup. The broth is in milky colour and is thick, according to what claim on the internet it's because the base is from chicken collagen. It's flavourful and chicken is tender. The chicken is featured with glutinous rice, ginseng, pumpkin seed, black sesame, walnut, pine, native chestnut, red dates (jujube), ginko, garlic and sunflower seed. This pot is much more expensive compared to the original one as obviously the colour of chicken is different, a different species of chicken silky fowl a rare chicken for the food of only royal families which the public couldn't taste in the past. But actually, if you taste both, they actually tasted more or like the same. Maybe is more to the health effect that they claim to clear the blood, prevent wind strengthening stamina, promote erythropoiesis in bone marrow and help with blood circulation.

Tosokchon Ogoigye Samgyetang 23000won

Tosokchon Samgyetang 16000won

Tosokchon rotisserie chicken, whole chicken roasted in the electric oven. Crispy on the outer and tender on the inside. Compared to the chicken soup, I personally like this.

Jeongigui Tongdak 15000won

This seafood and onion green pancake came in large portion, pancake baked with green onion, shrimp, clam meat and mussels. This is good too but we are all too full to really enjoy this last dish.

Haemul Pajeon 15000won

5. Ice cream @ Bukchon Hanok Village

This is not the exact best ice cream I had but eating ice cream on a cold day is best! Bought it at a random stall

Blueberry yoghurt ice cream 3500won

6. Budae Jjigae, Udon, Pork Cutlet, Fritters @ Original, Ewha University

Korean Army Stew for two person portion and it's huge to share among 6 of us of course we do order other dishes too. It comes with instant noodles, tteokbokki, ham, sausage, hard boiled egg, fishcake, cabbage, and etc. This pot of all Korean goodness is really good. And this restaurant is selling food at a cheaper price compared to all other restaurants we visited in Seoul (we later found out Busan food is cheaper, and we get to eat, enjoy and spent more there) :P The bill for the food below comes with a total at around 30000won only.

Here is a short article from the Ewha Womans University, I couldn't find more articles to this shop but I would like to say this restaurant did provide good service.

Address: 5, Ewhayeodae 7-gil, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Korea

Tel: 82-2-362-4295

Everland, Seoul

It's a sunny day and we are going to Everland! Very excited of this, I'm imagining that it will be like Disneyland or Universal Studio before I entered, taking pictures with all those cute adorable mascots because I don't play adventures rides and all those lovey dovey rides are either too old for me or it's just not fun being alone on it and all other seats are occupied by couples. But I know I'm entirely wrong after I entered anyway.

Been looking forward to this day before I land my feet on Korea carrying a wrong mindset, probably because I didn't really study much on this trip, my focus is in Busan, all the other places are planned by my sister. Was choosing between Lotte World and Everland at first, read reviews from people over the internet and finally choose Everland over the other as we had a discount coupon from Korea Tourism Organization for 30% which save us a lot of money though the ticket is still expensive from 52000 won to 36000 won and because my aunt forget to bring the discount coupon along, we initially had prepared extra money to buy it at original price but they surprisingly had this discount that day of buying 5 adult tickets and getting the 6th adult ticket with 5000 won off which is definitely a steal for us.

The journey is definitely the longest. Took us more than 2 hours to reach there from where we stay in Hongik. We changed a total of 5 lines and 42 stations to finally reach Jeondae, Everland station. But this is actually the cheapest way to reach Everland as the subway ticket for one way wasn't the most expensive, it's only 2450 won. The price and time compared to the bus weren't that much different after surveying and hence we decided on the subway. And there's shuttle bus to Everland right after you reach the last subway station, just cross over the pedestrian bridge for it, it's free!

Everland it's on Haloween theme in mid-October. We are welcomed with lots of ghost decoration and white clothes hanging above us.

We went straight for lunch before we tried out on the rides as its reaching afternoon and we are all hungry, our breakfast is just two rolls of delicious kimbap we bought at the gate of the subway. Without planning and map guide, I'm walking casually with my aunt to all those smooth rides and we queue on those we feel okay ride. That's not really a right thing to do though, for such expensive ticket you guys should study it a little bit for which to go and to not waste time walking around getting lost in it like me. So the random ride we try out will be Peter Pan, Mystery Mansion and Pororo 3D Adventure. While my sister and cousin queuing for the crazy T express ride which took them 2 hours for their turn, the queue is insane! Because of that no study in advance and exploring with no clue, we totally miss out the wet area ride which won't wet you anyway, the hologram of k-pop, the garden full of flowers all year long, the LED flowers, the fireworks I love the most, and etc. Lesson here, study the place you are visiting a bit, exploring randomly isn't cool and not a good excuse anyway :(

Safari World is the place I spent most time at. Getting in the van driving us into the forest near to wildlife such as tiger, lion, zebra and big black bear that perform. Later watching a performance of little animal in a small decorated stage, emcee all speaking in Korean, understand nothing but the show is cute. Lastly, spending more time at the monkey area watching different monkey in their respective area performing spontaneously.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I stood there for quite some time just to get a close-up photo of his red buttock :P

They even had fennec fox here which is very beautiful with their golden fur.

While waiting for their Halloween roadshow, did some selfie with all the red leaf autumn like background which gives my hair a little reflection of their red colour too. I don't dye my hair, it's natural :) Aww~ I miss my long smooth dark brownish hair.

With this cable car ride, we end our trip down here to Everland. If you ask me if it's worthy, my answer will be no even with the discount I got because I am not those adventurous people that got excited on all the rides, I can't. I rather spend time visiting a random cafe, had some good famous Korea coffee, and relax in a good environment, watching different people or even with good wifi connection browsing the internet on good articles, studying reading books or simply something to constantly exercising my brain.