Seoul: Ongo Food Tour

South Korea has been on my travel wish-list for a while and following the food blog Seouleats has been an integral part of the research. The blog writer also started Ongo Food Tours so it was with excitement and curiosity that I booked their Night Food tour during our visit to Seoul.

The meeting place was the Ongo culinary school near Anguk station (north side of the river). Unfortunately, our guide was not founder and master foodie Daniel Gray but a young local university student who spoke good English. The group was very mixed -- from business travelers enjoying a free evening to a young overseas nanny enjoying the city on her day off.

We started at a local street BBQ joint - where we enjoyed some grilled skirt steak -  a fairly tough and cheap cut of meat. We were introduced to Korean BBQ style -- enjoying banchan (side dishes), making lettuce wraps with the meat and adding ssamjang (a sauce made from mixing the 2 key sauces in Korean cuisine, doenjang and gochujang).

Mom-and-pop local BBQ joint



Getting the BBQ started

Beef Skirt and mushrooms on the grill

More fun though was the accompanying alcohol and some lessons on Korean drinking culture. Our guide taught us how to make soju bombs - start with a layer of coke soda, then top up with soju in a soju glass. Drop the whole soju glass in a larger glass of beer. It was surprising good especially when we had to "one-shot" the soju - you initially taste soju but finish with a sweet satisfying after-taste.

He also taught us some drinking games and the concept of a "black knight" or "black rose" - a male or female who will drink your round for you when you can't take anymore. With Paul being tee-total, you can guess who was his "black rose". I really enjoyed this stage of the food tour - mostly because I enjoyed the soju bombs so much and was feeling very merry.

Heading to our next food destination, we walked through dim back-alleys, hidden away from the bright lights of the main streets. It felt like we were discovering the inner soul of the city. Seoul has a very modern face - all sophisticated coffee shops; designer stores and cutting-edge plastic surgery. However, these inner alleys felt like we were exploring what truly laid beneath behind the modern façade - great food in low-key settings, made by locals for the locals.

Behind the modern skyscrapers....exploring the back alleys

Perhaps too, there are places the Seoul tourism board prefer to keep quiet about. It's not for me but here is the name of the restaurant in case you wanted to visit:

Stop no. 2 was a local tteokbokki (rice cake) joint. The place was packed with locals enjoying dinner with their families. We were the only foreigners - a good sign. We had two tteokbokki ramen stews - one spicy and one non-spicy called the royal tteokbokki which I have not had before. The royal tteokbokki was what this restaurant is known for. It was a nice savory dish with fish cakes, some vegetables and beef.

No English menu!

Royal Tteokbokki Stew

Spicy Tteokbokki

Not feeling too full yet, we headed to our third destination - a pojangmacha.

Pojangmachas are small tented food stalls, the backbone of street food in Korea. Some stalls have seating areas, serve alcohol with their food and keep out the cold in the winter with clear plastic tarp. In Korean dramas, the juicy confessions often happen over soju and snacks at a pojangmacha. Due to my love of Korean dramas, I will admit that I chose the Night Tour specifically to experience this slice of K-culture.

Choosing our seats

The pojangmacha we visited was fairly large but had the requisite humble decorations - check out the toilet paper roll hanging above! The food was excellent - we had a rolled egg omelette with ketchup and grilled mackerel and played some drinking games with local Cass beer.

 

Savory egg omelette with ketchup

Grilled mackerel - note the wasabi and soy sauce condiment

My first visit to a bona-fide pojangmacha

 



Our final stop was Kwangjang market - a traditional food market with many casual eateries selling street food.

 

Kwangjang market street food

 

We were guided to a popular restaurant specializing in bindaetteok - a crispy pancake made of mung beans. The mung beans are ground up; mixed with bean sprouts, green onions and then fried. It did not taste too special to me - similar to hash browns. I did love the accompanying makgeolli though - a milky, slightly sweet rice wine that tastes like alcoholic soy milk!

 

Mung bean pancake with oysters



Makgeolli bottle with a promo by Jun Ji-Hyun (You from another Star was airing then!)

 

The evening ended there - at a very bustling, noisy restaurant. The tour lasted about 3 hours and at the end, I would say I was only 85% full.  Looking back, I wished the tour had done the stops in reverse order so that we finished at the intimate BBQ place, drinking our soju bombs through the evening. Or perhaps the group just started out in high spirits but never truly bonded so there was no impetus to continue on our own. It would have been fun to end the night with noraebang - karaoke k-style!

With the tour priced at US$80 per person and 8 people in the group, we certainly were not getting our money's worth on the food which was very cheaply priced. Also, Paul was totally tee-total while we had some strong drinkers in the group which I'm sure ate into the budget. However, without the food tour, we would never have walked through the inner back alleys and visited the authentic local eateries where no tourists venture.