Over the Easter break, we took advantage of the long weekend and travelled to Seoul for a short vacation. Though I'd been there a few times recently for work, this was our first leisure trip to Korea. Having no other agenda than to eat and chill out, we made no plans but spent most of the time walking around and exploring the city's food and leisure scene.
It was the cusp of spring (the weekend when the cherry blossoms bloomed), but the weather was still very cold. Such was the perfect weather for eating, and during the four days we were there, we explored the main tourist areas of the city, with little research done or recommendations given, looking for what people in this city like to eat.
As our first stop, the most obvious area to visit was Myeongdong. This is Seoul's equivalent to Shinjuku (somewhat) and is usually bustling with tourists and local youngsters shopping at the numerous stores, eating at the many different types of restaurants and relaxing at the many cafes.
We were dazzled by the casual food options here, from the street carts serving grilled meats and seafood on skewers to casual restaurants serving anything from traditional Korean cuisine to Korean fast food, to the usual international fast food chains. We started our trek through the masses in Myeongdong by trying out the renowned street food of Seoul. Standing in the open in the freezing cold, it was so satisfying eating a hot freshly grilled meat skewer.
When we came past this sign for 'Dog Cafe' we didn't know if it was for a cafe which was dog-friendly or a cafe which served dog meat!
One of our finds of this trip was the local donut shop called Hara Donuts. They make healthy soy-based donuts and were hence less sweet than normal donuts, but which we found strangely addictive. This was a place we kept coming back to for more during this trip.
The donuts had a texture different from the usual; they were slightly doughy and quite dense. There were several different flavours but my favourite was still the plain Hara donuts, as they tasted healthy and I didn't feel so guilty gorging on them.
Ironically, right next to the healthy donut shop was the supremely unhealthy Korean fried chicken store.
We weren't sure if this was a good restaurant or not but the sight of the oily and crispy looking chicken through the shop window was enough to tempt us in.
We'd normally avoid such unhealthy food like deep friend chicken but our excuse this time was that we were in a foreign land and should try the local delicacies! This went down very well with a jug of beer.
To prevent us from ordering even more deep fried chicken, we tried filling ourselves up with some Korean omelette as well.
Another Korean dish we wanted to try was the Samgyetang (chicken ginseng soup). We found a place along one of the quieter alleys in the heart of Myeongdong which we had read about online (the address system in Seoul is alien to us and we ended up making several rounds looking for the place according to its address only to give up after half an hour and then accidentally stumble upon it almost immediately after).
I never liked Korean picked vegetables like Kimchi but somehow in Korea they tasted really nice. Perhaps in the bitterly cold weather and with a bottle of Shoju, they somehow tasted much better.
The chicken ginseng soup itself was very clear and refreshing and the black chicken was tender, but perhaps because of our high expectations we felt disappointed, as the soup did not have much ginseng flavour and hence the soup tasted a bit flat. There wasn't much ginseng in the soup and it tasted more like a normal chicken soup with some sprinkling of ginseng in it rather than a ginseng soup. We were not sure if this was the style of Korean chicken ginseng soup or if it was something particular to this restaurant.
After dinner, our next stop was for a coffee and some dessert. We came upon an interesting looking cupcake cafe, Cafe GoodOvening, which was along a main shopping street, on the second food.
Settling down at a table by a window, with a cup of coffee and a cupcake, we watched the world go by below us on a typically busy evening in Myeongdong.
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