It’s time to try Korean Food like a pro!
(ภาษาไทย)
This food tour is operated by O’ngo which offers cooking classes as well. We bought a FOOD Tour & BBQ, it’s $75.92 for the two of us.
Don’t worry that you won’t get enough food, the tour package included 6 different kinds of food for you try! You better have a light breakfast on the tour day and come hungry.
It’s a little too hard to find the O’ngo office, which is the meeting point for today. The taxi driver didn’t have a clue but if you can go to Insadong market and use KOKAO MAP app, you will be able to find it!
The closest subway station to Insadong Market is Anguk (Orange Line) and take exit no. 6
But we took a taxi! It’s about 5000 won ($5) taxi fare from our hotel, Fraser Place Center Seoul.
At the meeting room in O’ngo where we met our tour guide, there are so many expats from all over the world like Columbia, Canada, USA, and Thailand!
The tour started at 1pm with a fantastic Korean BBQ!
We have been living in Busan (Southern part of South Korea) for more than 4 months and this is not our first time for Korean BBQ, but this is one of the best. We can remember the first time when they’re putting sides on the table, al the sides could be one meal already.
Korean BBQ is not like other BBQ!
I don’t think they did seasoning on the meat at all! But the way to eat it is by putting meat on the leaf which could be cabbage or sesame leaf (the most popular is Sesame leaf).
Don’t put too much stuff in the leaf because you will have to fold them and eat them all in ONE BITE!
After that the guide took us to try some traditional sweet Korean rice drink called Sikhye – usually served as a dessert. It tastes way too sweet for us!
Next, it’s time to try Ttok-bok-gi.
If you are in South Korea, you need to know about Kimchi and Ttok (rice cake)!
Ttok-bok-gi is Spice Rice cake, the most popular street food.
But the version that we tried today was sweeter (just right sweet), and the rice cake was so chewy (some ttok is too hard to chew!).
I tried Ttok-bok-gi on street before but I never tried this one, it’s more noodle style. Most of us enjoyed it as much as the Korean BBQ.
After noodle, guess what is next??? KOREAN DUMPLING!
Looks like this dumpling shop is very popular. The guide lets us try 2 different dumplings – Kimchi and No Kimchi.
The Kimchi one is streaming dumpling – it’s as big as a baseball!
But we all liked the one without Kimchi – and it’s deep fried dumpling.
If you are in Insadong market and you want to try this dumpling shop, you can find the guy holding the sign like the picture above.
We did try 4 kinds of food already – I think the next two should be something a little lighter or smaller but the next one is Chinese-Korean noodle, called Sa-jang-myean (싸장면).
It’s sauce noodle (not soupy) and I thought it was very salty-sweet!
I wasn’t sure why we all didn’t like it – it’s not good or we were just too full??
So we left the shop with noodle left in the bowl – I think it’s kind of weird noodle, no meat at all!!!
At that time, I felt like I gained 5lbs already, there was too much carbohydrate from ttok-noodle- dumpling!
But when the tour guide said, the last one is dessert. We are back in the game again because there’s always room for dessert!
I was a little disappointed with this menu as we can just walk-in any shop to try. I expected (and was hoping) to try something on street.
All the food is good if you haven’t tried any Korean food before – it’s good to start your Korean Food experiences.
The tour finished at almost 3pm, it was nice to try new food with strangers 🙂
And it’s a nice market here – we can start to digest by shopping in Insadong Market, it’s one of our favorite markets in Seoul!
