You can guess that Korean cuisine is not limited to fried chicken and the famous bibimbap (which has become THE Instagrammable dish of the moment), which all our colleagues eat during their lunch break. Although they are delicious, they are by far the only references in Korean dishes.
To encourage you to vary the pleasures, 20 minutes went to test the dishes on the menu created by Korean chef Yoon Hyeok for the French restaurants “Chikin bang”. Their cuisine is directly inspired by traditional street food dishes that you might encounter on every street corner in South Korea. Here are our top 5.
The Tteokbokki
It’s rice paste marinated in a spicy sauce, explains Thomas Chhim, in charge of marketing and sales development at ChikinBang. Traditionally, we find in this bowl filled with sauce: vegetables, cheese and fish. Tteokbokki is often accompanied by a portion of rice. And be careful if you take it alone, the spicy aftertaste is no cake for unaccustomed palates!
Corn Dogs
Think of it as another form of cotton candy. On this skewer: part mozzarella, part sausage coated with dough and breadcrumbs. Everything is fried, of course, and sprinkled with mustard sauce (not very strong) and ketchup.
“In Korea, it can be found in different forms. Either 100% sausage, or 100% mozzarella, or half and half,” specifies Thomas Chhim. Corn Dogs are often taken as “appetite suppressants” by locals.
The Sotteok Sotteok
Sotteok Sotteok remind us of the taste of Tteokbokki, and that is not insignificant. They take their very compact rice dough and add sausage to their recipe, all served on a skewer. They are coated in sauce, but unlike their cousins the Tteokbokki, more sweet than spicy, with mustard as a bonus.
A snack, very popular in South Korea, that K-drama fans must have probably already seen.
Fried Chicken with Soju
It no longer needs to be introduced: Korean fried chicken that “is found everywhere in the streets of Seoul”. It’s American-style fried chicken, which we see in all sorts of ways on social media. But the original, the real one is the “spicy gochujang”. Sorry to tell you, but without it, all you ate was a simple fried chicken… from KFC.
Koreans like to eat this dish with a side dish. Then, toast with a little “Soju”, a Korean rice-based alcohol. Tchin.
The Bingsu
Now let’s move on to dessert with Bingsu, a milk-based shaved ice cream. “It’s not a really sweet ice cream. It’s the toppings that will add flavor to the ice cream,” explains Thomas Chhim. In Korea in this case, red beans and green tea traditionally.
However, we are increasingly encountering different tastes such as mango or strawberry, because the culture has become very “Americanized”, underlines marketing manager ChikinBang.
So, which one haven’t you tried yet?