Sindangdong Tteokbokki Town

신당동 떡볶이 타운

I recently went here and felt that I just had to write about it! This post is to inform people who are in Korea about this delicious area of Seoul, and to inform those outside of Korea about the legendary food that is Tteokbokki.

Tteokbokki 떡볶이

Tteokbokki (pronounced 'tockbocky') is a traditional Korean street food that is also served pretty much anywhere. The street food version usually tastes better than the restaurants, but not in the case of Ttokbokki town (which I will get to later). It consists of cylindrical pressed rice cakes which are cooked in a spicy and garlicky sauce alongside 'odeng' (fish cake), egg, onions and various vegetables.

Now, I love spicy food, but I was so shocked to see kids as young as 5 years old tucking in to this stuff when I first arrived. I was sitting there blowing my nose every 2 mins, whilst these kids were like 'mmm yummmmyy morrreee!' Kids back home need to learn a lesson or two!

Tteokbokki Town

After experiencing some major Tteokbokki cravings, I decided that I needed to give this place a visit. It is located in Sindang-dong, and is basically a whole street (not town) filled with spicy, yummy tteokbokki restaurants.

The entrance to 'Tteokbokki Town'

The most popular restaurant is apparently called 'Halmeoni Tteokbokki' which has a big picture of a granny over entrance ('halmeoni' means 'grandma' in Korean) - it opened in 1953 so it's been open a while!! It seemed more of an older clientele restaurant though, so we opted for the bigger, more 'hip' (lol, granny joke i'm so funny) restaurant opposite called 'I Love Sindang-dong'. It was huge! Apparently back in 2002, seven tteokbokki restaurants merged to form this big mumma of a restaurant. It is mega-popular with young people and also celebrities (they all had their photos/autographs up by the entrance to entice people in).

Their menu was really varied. The description of 'tear rice cake' made me laugh; "require of sweat and tears" - I guess it's spicy!?? And when they say spicy in Korea, hell do they mean it!

We opted for the cheese filled tteokbokki (and a beer) and it was......amazing!!!
They brought over the pan and it was filled with SO MUCH FOOD! There was tteokbokki (obviously) - both regular and mozzarella cheese-filled. There was a whole pack of ramen, eggs, mandu (dumplings), glass noodles, vegetables etcetc.

The pan of uncooked food

I love these kinds of restaurants where you cook your own food. In England we are too health and safety conscious to let people have their own gas cookers on their tables in restaurants, so it makes a really exciting adventure to be able to do it here!! Not sure letting me in control of a gas hob is wise though, especially after a beer....

Anyway, we got cooking and after about 5 mins of stirring and bubbling we started to eat...