Korean Street Food
When visiting Korea, you don’t need to visit a luxurious sit-down restaurant to get a true sense of the cuisine. Instead, you can hit the streets — with vendors & carts serving some of the most sought-after Korean flavors curbside. Korean street food culture traces its origin back to the mid-1900s after the Korean War.
These street vendors provided locals & low-income workers with quick and affordable nutritious meals on the way to and from work. Today, street food has become some of the beloved meals eaten all over Korea. Here are some of our favorites:
Korean Street Food = Exceptional Cuisine Everywhere!
Tteokbokki (Spicy Korean Rice Cakes): this famous Korean street food was recently voted as the #1 comfort food in Korea, as reported by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. Tteokbokki consists of cylindrical rice cakes drenched in a sweet red chili sauce. Often accompanied by rice cakes and garnished with green onions, this popular street food dish is spicy & unforgettable. Tteokbokki originated during the Joseon Dynasty period and was originally a braised dish of sliced rice cakes, meat, eggs, & Korean spices. Considered to be a luxurious dish, due to the shortage of flour, it was a food afforded only by the upper class at the time. This once coveted dish can now be found at just about every street corner in Seoul, South Korea.
Gimbap (Korean Rice Roll): gimbap has risen through the ranks as one of the easiest street foods to take on the go. Sliced cucumbers, crunchy pickled radish, vegetables, & fish cake, are wrapped in seaweed and sesame-oil rice. This on-the-go street food is sold in moving street carts & carefully wrapped in plastic for easy travel. Influenced heavily by the Imjin Japanese War of the 20th century, Koreans created their own style of rolled seaweed rice — their version includes: toasted seaweed & rice seasoned with sesame oil. These subtle nuances have elevated this dish and turned it into one of the easiest & most convenient Korean street foods eaten today. It’s not uncommon to see busy Korean workers holding gimbap as they walk through the city on their way to work.
Hotteok (Korean Sweet Pancakes): extremely popular in the cold winter months, hotteok is a sweet Korean deep-fried pancake. Stuffed with brown sugar, cinnamon, and ground nuts & seeds — hotteok is must-try Korean street food. The texture is chewy, sweet, on the inside and crispy on the edges. Sold in street carts all over South Korea, this street food was an introduction by Chinese immigrants in the 1900s. Quickly popularized in the 20th century, Koreans have created countless variations of this sweet snack. Most notably, famous recipes have emerged with recipes like green tea hotteok, sweet corn hotteok, & Korean blackberry hotteok. This street food is a perfect representation of how Korean culture can transform culinary elements and truly make them their own.
Find Local Korean Shefs & Meals
If you love traditional Korean food, made in an authentic Korean way, order some home-cooked Korean food from our local community of Shefs — every cook is food safety certified and earns a meaningful income selling their homemade dishes.
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