How to Have a Cheap Date Night: Street Food for the Win!

My favorite thing in basically every city is to see it at night. The colors and the lights make everything so vivid, and I love the nighttime energy. Seoul’s neon vibe and large shopping districts lend themselves to evening strolls and people-watching. Added bonus: avoid the scorching sun and terrible August humidity!

Over a couple of nights, we enjoyed an evening stroll to one of Seoul’s largest shopping districts, enjoyed several of Seoul’s many riverside parks, and most importantly – found some famous street food.

As soon as we saw Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) during the day, we knew we wanted to see it at night. We were not disappointed! If it looks like the aliens have landed during the day, at night you are positively expecting some long-faced, silver-suited green men to step out at any moment. Plus, it’s just a gorgeous place to walk around and see all the lights. Some of the malls in this district are open 24/7.

We walked back into the nearby park we had visited during the day to see Heunginjimun (Dongdaemun) Gate lit up with the city in the background. Very much worth the extra visit!

Next door, we headed into the area of Gwangjang Market, most of which sells clothing and other fabric goods. That part of the market was closed for the day, but the part we were interested in was still very much open. Mokjagolmok, the food vendor alley within Gwangjang, was open and almost empty of customers.

To be clear, every photo we have ever seen of Mokjagolmok shows it packed wall-to-wall with people, and all the guidebooks tell you about how crowded and chaotic it is. Some vendors were closed, but a variety were still open. There was so much capacity that every vendor tried their best to get us to sit down at their stall. It was really hard to choose where to start, especially because I knew I would feel bad for all the vendors to whom we didn’t give business! It’s clear the lack of tourist trade is getting difficult for businesses here.

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Then, very unexpectedly we saw a familiar face. We had arrived at the stall of Cho Yonsoon, whose kalguksu (Korean knife-cut noodles) were featured on Netflix’s Street Food in 2019. (Street Food: Asia, episode 6.) We watched the episode months ago but had never thought to go back and see what market was featured, so when we decided to head to Mokjagolmok we really didn’t know that’s where we were going. I don’t think it ever occurred to me that we could even get close to Mrs. Cho’s stall, wherever it was. Given that her benches were as empty as everyone else’s, we decided to sit down and give her famous noodles a try.

Again, we were not disappointed. We were SO HOT but it was worth it. We watched Mrs. Cho knead and cut dough in front of us while we ate her satisfyingly chewy noodles and dumplings in a simple broth. We tried some of her kimchi, though it was on the spicy side for us. I definitely want to go back when the weather is cooler. She was very kind and talked to us, even though it must have been clear we couldn’t understand most of what she was saying. Though we tried our best with our novice language skills (and could have ordered our food regardless), she even ran to get a Korean English-speaking customer in the market to interpret for us!

Unbelievably, a bowl of kalgaksu and dumpling soup large enough for the two of us to share cost only 6,000 KRW, about $5 USD.

To balance out our brush with fame, we ate another well-known food, bindaetteok, at a lesser-known stall. I had been excited to try these mung bean savory pancakes, and Mokjagolmok is known for them. Once again, the vendor was kind and welcoming and fried up a pancake on the griddle right in front of us. It was crispy on the outside and a little chewy on the inside – perfect. We might have been sweating, but we were satisfied.

To find a cooler place to spend an evening, on another night we walked through Seoul Forest and along the Han River. It was wild to see how high the river must have been during the monsoon flooding earlier this month. There was still lots of debris very high up in the trees by the water, and the river was running really fast and high. The pictures we saw in the news during the flooding obviously didn’t do justice to how much the river got out of control.

On the river in Ttukseom Hangang Park we had a fried chicken and beer picnic. This is such a popular combination in South Korea, sold in many restaurants that specialize in just chicken and beer, that it has its own word – chimaek. Chi is from the word for chicken (when it’s fried it’s just called chikin), and maek is for beer (maekju). The chicken tastes pretty much like you’d expect, but the outside is crispier than American-style fried chicken. You can get it covered with lots of sauces, too, but we haven’t ventured into any of those yet. When we do, you’ll be the first to hear about it!

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Our need for food satisfied once more, we burned some calories by walking further along the river, along Seoul’s extensive riverside pathway. We did finally have a lot of company here, as everyone seemed to be enjoying the breeze by taking their evening exercise.

The many bridges we passed under were beautiful with their lights reflected in the water, making the river walk the perfect place to enjoy the evening skyline.