Seoul Food Souvenirs

What to buy from Seoul as food souvenirs? A few friends have started asking me this. So I thought I’d share this with all of you. There are actually a lot to buy, it all depends on what you like. My husband and I enjoy food and of course the KimChi. So we ended up buy a 1kg bag of KimChi. To add to that, we also bought a big tub of Koreas' chili paste and a small tub of soy bean paste and Korean chili flakes. These are used to make the KimChi soup and the broth of seafood tofu soup and pork soup. If you are a die hard fan of their broth, I would highly recommend buying these.

Seoul Food Souvenirs

Other food souvenir we bought was the sweet potato crisp. These were unique to me as we always see potato crisp but sweet potato was something out of the ordinary to me.

These are some of the recommended food souvenirs. There are lots of other stuff you can get from their local supermarket and wet market. So go around and have look. You may be surprised by what you can find!

Happy shopping…..

Vending Machine

I know we are all used to seeing vending machines selling food and drinks. But what I came across as something unusual at a shopping mall in Seoul was this. Check out the photo!

Socks vending machine - at a mall in Seoul

Yes you saw right! Vending machine selling socks!!! When I saw this, I was thinking why socks of all things? But I do realise that in Seoul, there are really a lot of small stalls selling socks. I really don’t know why this is. But I can only guess that its cold there and they need more socks to keep them warm! Hahaha..

N Seoul Tower

Namsan Tower in the evening

The N Seoul Tower, officially the CJ Seoul Tower and commonly known as the Namsan Tower and Seoul Tower, is a communication and observation tower located on Namsan Mountain in central Seoul, South Korea.

Built in 1969, and at a cost of approximately $2.5 million, it was opened to the public in 1980. Since then, the tower has been a landmark of Seoul and measures 236.7 m (777 ft) in height (from the base) and tops out at 479.7 m (1,574 ft) above sea level.

Many visitors ride the Namsan cable car up the mountain, and then walk to the tower. The tower features a gift shop and restaurants on the ground floor. Visitors may go up the tower for a fee. There are four observation decks (the 4th observation deck, which is the revolving restaurant, rotates at a rate of one revolution every 48 minutes), as well as gift shops and two restaurants. Most of the city of Seoul can be seen from the top. Close to N Seoul Tower is a second lattice transmission tower.

At the tower you would also see thousands of love padlocks, a custom by which padlocks are affixed to a fence by sweethearts to symbolize their everlasting love.

Access by taxi or car is prohibited. So you will need to walk, take a bus or cable car. I would suggest the cable car so that you can enjoy the luscious and pleasant view of the surrounding. From Myeongdong Station, it its a 10minute walk to the cable platform.

Fare: Round-trip - 6,300 won;   One-way - 4,800 won
Hours: 10am - 10.30pm

Directions:
1. Take subway line 4 to Myeongdong Station
2. Take exit 3 from the station
3. Take the wide road next to the convenience store
4. Walk straight to the left of Pacific Hotel
5. Continue walking through the commercial quarter until you reach a small stairway
6. Walk up the stairway
7. Continue walking by the restaurants on your right
8. Keep walking up in the direction of Mt Namsan
9. There is a vacant lot on your right and you will find the cable car platform
10. Buy a ticket at the booth on the 3rd floor and take the cable car on the 4th floor.

DMZ, Korea

DMZ

It is often said that the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is the most dangerous place in the world. This is probably because the 4km strip of land that separates the 2 sides of Korea bristles is filled with troops, guard posts, tanks, missile, bunkers, land mines and other tools of destruction.

Mine signs along the journey to DMZ

This is definitely a must place to go. It really is an eye opener of how vast a difference it is between the two countries. To go there, it is only allowed by tour. There are a few things that you can do there. We chose the tour which allowed us to go thru one of the incursion tunnels built secretly by North Korea right to the border of South Korea which was recently discovered. The tunnel is about 5ft height at the most. So if you are taller than that, there will definitely be a lot of bending to do and knocking on the head! You must be wondering what head knocking I’m talking about. Not gonna tell you about it. You can discover it when you are there. As you join the tour you will hear extraordinary stories of what the tour guides have to say. It will probably take about half a day. I highly recommend this.

We were not allowed to take any photos when there. However, we were brought to another side of it where we could take pictures from a distant. Here are some of them:

Photo Line - you are not allowed to take any photos after the yellow line

The view of North Korea taken from the yellow line

Messages left by the South Korean soldiers on the fence

Modern Korean Cuisine, Shinsegae

Shinsegae - Flagshop store, Myeong-dong

Shinsegae is one of the first department store and discount store of Korea. We went to their flagship store in Myeong-dong which is the pride of Shinsegae. The Main Store consists of the “main building”, which is a premium and very first department store of Korea and the other parts, “new building” and “urban style department store”.

You can really go crazy shopping there as you will be spoilt with the vast choices and variety there. It has up to 14 floors!! There is practically everything under the sun for everyone with different interest to shop, eat, relax and even learn. Ranging from beauty salons, Food Market, Women’s Career Fashion, Cosmetics/Accessories, Young wear, Men’s Wear, Men’s Accessories, Kids, Sport, Home Collection, Restaurants even Shinsegae Cultural Hall and Gallery!!

After walking for hours we decided to stop for dinner. We went to the Restaurant Floor which is 10F. The entire floor houses up to 10 different restaurants ranging from Korean, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese to café/bistro style. After looking around, we decided to go with the Modern Korean Cuisine. 

Modern Korean Cuisine Restaurant

Barbequed minced meat

There was quite a variety to the menu and we decided to ask the manager to recommend their specialty. As a result, we ordered barbequed minced meat, and octopus to go with rice. An array of side dishes was provided including radish, kimchi, bean sprouts with sesame oil, “doenjang” (bean paste) soup and salad. The Kimchi was superb. Think we asked for re-fills twice! Haha..

Variety of side dishes

Everything was delicious, especially the barbequed meat which has a fragrant slight burnt charcoal aroma to it. It was slightly sweet and garnished with some crispy stuff at the side. We just couldn’t get enough of it. We want to ask what the side garnish was but the manager and all the waiters were so busy then we finished everything before we could get their attention to ask! Even the octopus was cooked to perfection, spicy and tender. 

Stir fried octopus

I highly recommend this restaurant to those who want to try Korean food for the first time. I reckon that you will definitely fall in love with Korean food thereafter.

Address:

Modern Korean Cruisine

10F, Shinsegae Department Store

53-50 Chungmuro Iga,

Jung-gu, Seoul.

How to get there:

Hoehyeon Station, Subway Line 4 Exit 7

Korean Fried Chicken (Two-Two)

Two-Two Chicken

If you have never tried Korean fried chicken, you have got to try the Two-Two fried chicken joint in Korea. Two-Two is supposedly the original and best Korean fried chicken chain. Once you’ve tried it, you will definitely be back for more. Two-Two, is sometimes called by its Korean transliteration, Dul Dul. They have many outlets around Korea, but we tried the one at Myeong-dong.

They have a few types of fried chicken consisting of a few permutations such as regular fried chicken, fried with sweet garlic sauce, half and half, chicken tenders (for the lazy one) and a few local side dishes. I could not decide on which to try and decided to go with the half and half if the regular fried chicken the sweet garlic sauce.

Fried Chicken - Sweet garlic sauce

Fried Chicken - Regular

The regular fried chicken is surprisingly juicy. Their plain fried chicken with optional sauce for dipping is perfect beer chicken. The crust is delicate, almost not-existent. It was well marinated and had crackling crispy skin and surprisingly not to greasy. The meat was juicy on the inside even for the breast meat. The garlic sauce was actually piquant (sweet, salty, garlicky and tangy). The skin was still crispy and drenched with the sauce. Sesame seed was sprinkled on for the extra fragrance. Overall, we preferred the regular fried chicken. So much so that we actually went back one more time on the last day for lunch! Yum Yum!! 

Price: 26,000W for 2 pax with beer

Location: Locate the Cinema at Myeong Dong metro, cross the main street and look out for Pacific Hotel. The restaurant is just next to it.

Korean Red Chilli Noodle soup with Mussels...

On the arrival day, by the time I checked into the hotel (Fraser Central Place) I was already starving!! Had no clue where to go for my first meal. Just as I walked out of the hotel there was this small restaurant. The restaurant owner looked kinda friendly and could actually speak mandarin. He thought my husband was from China. Hahaha…We ended up having lunch there after some persuasion by the restaurant owner. It looked like a tiny place from the outside. But it was bigger than it looked when we went in.

The menu was not that extensive. We looked around to see what was the assuming favourite dish ordered by the majority. There were lots of photos stuck on the walls as well. Some were of famous Korean celebrities. There was even one photo showing the long queue of die hard fans under rain just to get a seat in this restaurant!

After seeing this.. we didn’t need any further persuasion and decided to go for the Korean red chilly noodle soup (jjampong) with mussels. When the noodles came, boy, were we surprised. It was a really big bowl with lots of mussels indeed.

We slurped every single mussel down together with the noodles and broth that came with it. The broth was slightly spicy rich in flavour of the mussels, onion, leek and carrots that came with it. It was definitely a satisfying first meal in Seoul!

Check out the photos below.



Korean red chilli noodles soup (jjampong) with mussels

Seoul!!!

I just returned from an 8days holiday to Seoul, Korea and I'm having kimchi withdrawal syndromes!!! I cannot seem to stop my craving for kimchi. I have so much to tell and I don't know where to start.

What can I say in just 1 sentence? Hmm...

“A must go colourful, breathtaking city with good food, shopping and places to visit”.

Hope I did it justice there.

Errmm…

Looks like I will be blogging quite abit on Seoul every now and then?!?

Anyway, as my stay there was such a short one, I didn’t manage to visit many places especially since Seoul is such a big city. But I can definitely tell you that I was sooo tired by the end of the holiday as there was so much walking and so much to see and absorb within such a short span of time.

Here is the list of places that I visited.

1.             Namdaemun Market

2.             Myeongdong

3.             DMZ

4.             Gyeongbokgung Palace

5.             Premium Outlet

6.             Dongdaemun

7.             Lotte World

8.             COEX Mall

9.             Itaewon

10.           Cheonggyecheon Stream

In the streets of Myeongdong