I only ate the bindatteok from the ladies with a stand in the middle of the walkway. The other places have them stacked up, looking old.
There is also a yuk hoe alley with several vendors, but I did not try that.
Of course, Gwangjang Market has many shops, including a section dedicated to hanbok attire.
For dinner after visiting Gyeongbokgung Palace and the National Folk Museum of Korea next to it (both well worth visiting), I went to Hwangsaengga Kalguksu nearby for a bowl of kalguksu/ knife cut noodles.
Menu
I had an order of the jumbo mandu (₩12,000), which were being made in the front of the shop.
Such fat dumplings! They had pork, some veggies, and glass noodles. They were good but the skins were very soft and delicate, maybe a little too soft for my taste.
And of course I had a bowl of the kalguksu (₩12,000). The noodles were very good - they had a very nice texture and chew to them. The broth was light with mushrooms, zucchini, onions, and some other veggies. The broth is beef based - there were some small chunks of beef in there as well. It was kind of a light and fresh tasting dish in general.
This was a very good bowl of noodles. I’d maybe skip the dumplings next time though.
For some dessert I took a quick bus ride to Charles H in the Four Seasons Hotel. Charles H is a speakeasy in the lower level of the Four Seasons. It takes its name from Charles H. Baker Jr., who wrote The Gentleman’s Companion - a classic tome on cocktails. I wandered around looking for the entrance before a helpful staff member showed me the unmarked door the bar.
There’s a ₩10,000 cover charge if you aren’t a guest at the hotel. This includes a taste of champagne once you sit down. There were also some snacks to munch on. I’ve been to a few bars in Seoul now and they always seem to give you a little snack with your drink.
VELVET MARTINI (₩29,000)
Beefeater 24, Blanc Vermouth, Fino Sherry, Liquid Hallabong Zest
For a first cocktail I had a Velvet Martini, which I learned was similar to a Fifty-Fifty Martini, heavy on the vermouth. This also had sherry and Hallabong, which is a type of tangerine from Jeju Island. This was very nice and crisp, with a little savory from the olive garnish.
TOASTED MARSHMALLOW EGGNOG (₩34,000)
Pierre Ferrand 1840 Cognac, Madagascar Vanilla Bean, Dry Curacao, Cream, Egg, Toasted Marshmallow Fluff
Next I had an eggnog cocktail. Tis the season! This had a meringue-like marshmallow topping that was dispensed out of a spray can and then toasted with a torch. It came with a spoon. It was a very nice dessert cocktail.
GARDEN PARTY (₩27,000)
Cloudy Apple Juice, English Cucumber, Elderflower, Fresh Mint
To finish, I had a n/a Garden Party, which was quite green and also quite green tasting with cucumber and apple. Very nice, and not too sweet.
Very good cocktails!
Some more pictures of the decor.
The snacks are called “anju,” which are meant to be eaten with alcohol to prevent drunkenness. 
If you go to a karaoke bar (“norae bang”), you can get a platter of fruit and snacks to go with your high-octane beverage, which might be weird for non-Koreans.
Ah thanks for that. I wish more bars in the US did that! I actually did see some people chowing down on some fruit at the bar in other places as well, that explains it.
Lunch on Monday was at Myeongdong Kyoja in Myeongdong, just a short walk from where I was staying and near the Myeongdong shopping street. There’s two locations of this restaurant close to each other, I believe I went to the second location on 8 Myeongdong 10-gil. Myeongdong Kyoja is a restaurant specializing in kalguksu, opened in 1964. It’s very popular, but when I went there around noon on Monday there was only a short queue. There was a section for solo diners where I was seated. I forgot to take a picture of them, but there were these robots on wheels that were helping bring dishes out that were pretty cool to see.
The simple menu only has a few items - the kalguksu / knife cut noodles, mandu, bibim-guksu / thin noodles in a spicy sauce served cold, and kong-guksu / cold green noodles in a soybean milk sauce that apparently is available only during the summertime.
I just had the Kalguksu (₩27,000). There was some very good kimchi which was very garlicky. The bowl of noodles had a saucy ground pork topping, some zucchini, and four dumplings which were mostly wrapper. And a generous amount of kalguksu. In comparison to Hwangsaengga’s kalguksu the night before, the noodles were a bit softer if I recall correctly, and the soup was meatier and heartier, likely due to the pork topping. I read a few reviews of Myeongdong Kyoja being a bit overhyped (it’s on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list, etc.) but I thought this was a very good bowl of noodles and I’m glad I tried it. I maybe wouldn’t wait in a long queue for it though.
After lunch I went to check out some views at the N Seoul Tower in Namsan Park. I didn’t have any food there but here are some pics of that.
There are walls where couples can clip a lock onto.
A view of the city from up the tower.
After coming down from the tower, I went to the Shinsegae department store nearby to get a snack at their food hall. Shinsegae is the other huge department store in Myeongdong along with the Lotte department store, and they have a similarly impressive food hall in the lower level. Here’s some pictures of the food hall there.
For a snack I had some tteokbokki from the Igane Topokki 이가네 떡볶이 counter in the restaurant section of the food hall. From what I could look up online, Igane (also romanized as Leegane) is a tteokbokki stand in Busan. I guess this is a Seoul outpost? Despite the redness of the thick sauce, it was not super spicy and a bit sweet. There were lots of big pieces of tteokbokki with a really nice chewy texture. There were also some large thin squares of fish cake that also soaked up a good bit of the sauce.
Tteokbokki is never super spicy and always a bit sweet, but the spiciness should be a major energizer for the mouth. It should really pop. Also, it should be served very hot in temperature. I really like twiggim tteakbokki, with little fritters added.
Not sure how much longer you are in Seoul for… maybe you should check out a place that is not so touristed:
Cheonha Bossam
천하보쌈
Thanks for the rec! I’ve actually already come back home but I will take a note of that for the future.
I realized I put the incorrect price for the kalguksu at Myeongdong Kyoja due to a bad cut and paste, whoops. It should be ₩11,000 not ₩27,000, that would have been a slightly expensive bowl of kalguksu 
For dinner on Monday I went to Maple Tree House for some KBBQ. Maple Tree House has three locations in Seoul, and I went to the outpost in Itaewon, a neighborhood known for its vibrant nightlife and high population of foreigners. Apparently some KBBQ places don’t accept solo diners (except perhaps when you order at least two portions), but that’s not a problem here!
The menu. Meat is sold by the pound - prices are I believe for a typical portion size. I ordered the JEJU Korean Black Pork Belly (₩21,500 / 150g) and the Premium Korean Aged Beef Striploin (₩58,000 / 150g) of Hanwoo beef, which is kind of like the Wagyu of Korea. According to the menu, it is 1++ or the highest grade in terms of marbling.
Banchan and condiments, etc. There were perilla leaves and lettuce leaves for wrapping, soft tofu in a soy based sauce, cabbage kimchi, potato salad, radish kimchi I think, sliced trumpet mushroom, a spicy salad of mung bean sprouts and scallions, a green salad with I think a sesame dressing, coarse salt, and ssamjang for dipping.
The meat was presented on a platter complete with a parsley garnish.
The grill - looks like they use lump charcoal here which gave the meat some smokiness. The retractable pipe-like hood on top was very effective in sucking out the smoke from the grill.
The beef went on the grill first, along with the slice of sweet potato and the slice of onion. I didn’t have to do anything but pick the meat off the grill. The waitress handled all of the cooking. She was very adept using a pair of scissors to progressively slice the piece of steak up into smaller and smaller pieces!
Some beef on the plate and on a wrap. The beef was really delicious. It was very well marbled and beefy. I think this was my first time trying Hanwoo beef.
Next, the pork belly was cooked. It was also very good and quite rich, sliced into thick lardons with some crispy bits.
There was a slightly sweet tea to finish. I believe this is sujunggwa / cinnamon tea.
The total bill was ₩88,400 including a pint of beer. I don’t have KBBQ here in the US super often, but I have eaten my fair share of it. The KBBQ at Maple Tree House was really good, and on par with what I remember was the best that I’ve had in the States so far, at Park’s BBQ in LA Koreatown.
After dinner I walked to All That Jazz nearby to get a drink and listen to some jazz. All That Jazz is the oldest jazz club in Korea. The crowd was a little sparse on a Monday night but the music was great, and also they also had some good cocktails.
Wow that beef looks great!! Wonderful trip so far.
Tuesday lunch was at Kkangtong Mandu in Jongno, before a visit to the Bukchon Hanok Village nearby. It was a bit of an adventure getting a seat here! They are a very popular mandu restaurant and use CatchTable for seating but didn’t seem to accept emails for signing up to the wait list. It seems that some CatchTable kiosks accept email and others only a phone number? This particular kiosk required a Korean number, and though I had gotten a Korean eSim from KT for data for some reason it wasn’t receiving SMS’s (I eventually did get several SMS’s for this a few hours later 
). I also had to use the Google Translate app on my phone to see the instructions - it appears that you also order your items at the time you get your number. I did take note of the number it gave me even if my SMS wasn’t working at the time, and also listened to how that number (58!) sounded in Korean in an attempt to not be skipped over.
I kind of heard my number (I think) after about a 20 minute wait and headed to the counter. The nice man at the front confirmed my order and I was shown to a table.
Sweet pickled onion, kimchi, soy / vinegar sauce, and kimchi garlic chives arrived. I wasn’t exactly sure what I ordered! All I know was I picked something that sounded like mandu soup. It turns out it was a bowl of Joraengi Tteok Mandu Guk / cocoon shaped rice cake and dumpling soup / 조랭이떡만두국 for ₩12,000 (thanks Papago + Google). Using Papago the description reads as: three carefully made dumplings and rice cakes in a thick beef bone broth.
There were three huge dumplings. They were filled with pork, garlic chives, and tofu. The reddish one on the top had a bit of chili pepper, and the one in the middle also had shrimp. The dumplings were delicious. I spooned some of the dumpling sauce onto them while eating, they were a bit too large to dip. There were these little tteok / rice pasta which were “cocoon shaped” with two connected spheres that had a really nice chewy texture. The beef and kelp broth was nice as well with a few small pieces of beef within. And to top it off there were some artfully sliced egg sheets. This was a delicious bowl of dumpling soup, and worth the bit of wait and effort to get in.
Your meal looks delicious and the unusual shape of the dduk (rice cake) is intriguing. It’s one of my favorite things to eat (I take mine with veggie mandu). Silkworm cocoon is something Koreans eat but not my parents — not something that appealed to them. So, I guess the shape of the dduk is a nod to that delicacy.
The name of the restaurant is curious — it means “metal can.” I wonder what’s up with that; like a fun ironic name, given the obvious handmade nature of the mandu. They ain’t outta a can!
I looked up some pictures of the silkworm cocoons and they do kind of look like them with the white color and peanut like shape. I didn’t try silkworm on this trip either, maybe next time! I might be able to find it in a can here at home at a Korean grocery.
Interesting!
If you want to try it in SF, you can get them sometimes at Isarn Garden in San Carlos
A bit after lunch, I went to the original location of the London Bagel Museum near Kkangtong Mandu for an afternoon snack. London Bagel Museum specializes in - you guessed it - bagels. Don’t they call bagels, beigels in London though? They use the CatchTable kiosk and are super popular. Luckily for me this kiosk accepted emails - I got an email with a link to my place in line, and also eventually got an email when I reached the front of the line, so I was able to explore some of the surrounding neighborhood as I waited for my number to get to the front. There are two queues you can sign up for - one for ordering takeout and one for dining in which I joined.
Finally after quite a long wait (I think it was over 45 minutes) I got an email that my table was ready. Once your number is called, you are led to your seat, and then you get in another line to select your food. If you want something other than a ready made sandwich or a bagel, they give you a pager. There were several types of bagels to choose from, along with some pre-made bagel sandwiches and containers of different cream cheese spreads to add to your bagel.
There was also a lot of British-inspired decor inside, maybe the owners are Anglophiles.
I had looked at some reviews online and selected one of their signature bagels - one stuffed with potato and topped with a slice of American cheese that looked like a Kraft single. I also got an oat milk latte.
First as some caveats, I think I’ve had a grand total of one NYC bagel before, along with a couple Montreal bagels. I haven’t tried a beigel in London yet. This bagel from London Bagel Museum was a decent if odd combination of processed American cheese, a bun like bagel that was a little chewy but softer than what I remember of a NYC bagel, and a potato filling. Worth the wait? Not really, just based on this one bagel. The oat milk latte was good.
I checked out the Bukchon Hanok Village nearby also. It’s an area in the Jongno district that has many Hanok - traditional Korean houses. It’s also a residential area and only open for visiting until the evening. There were signs warning against tourists making too much noise, and also people carrying those signs around the village. Here’s a few pictures of the village.
Do you happen to know what were in the pots below the deck? kimchi, gojujiang?
Hmm I don’t know, didn’t think to ask. The last photo was taken in a small museum and cafe in the village. I think typically they are used to store kimchi or other fermented foods?
Those are jangdokdae pots:
This London Bagel Museum place is fascinating, because I’m not sure anyone in London would wait in a line like that for a bagel. They’re just not very popular in the UK. But things are always worth a try and I love bready things so I liked reading your report. The coffee looked like it was properly made.
You’re right - the famous bagel joint in London’s Whitechapel area is called Beigel Bake. I don’t know why the spelling would be different here - Jewish migrants from a different part of the world?
That looks bizarre-o. I would be flabbergasted if served that but you are way more diplomatic than I am. That looks like something that my immigrant mom would’ve served me and my brother thinking, “oh, this is how bagels are prepared. The kids are gonna love this.”
