Seoul Food, Seoul, South Korea

A trip would not be complete without trying local food! Here are the memorable ones from my recent Seoul wanderings:

My friend, GaYeong, brought me to Oh Hyang Jokbal, one of the top 3 jokbal restaurants in Seoul. The restaurant is located in an alley near the City Hall and it took us some time going to and fro looking for the restaurant.

Jokbal 족발 is pig's trotters or pig's feet. The jokbal in this restaurant is cooked in five secret spices/ingredients that gives its delicious aroma. The meat is very tender and is best paired with the restaurant's garlic sauce 마늘소스. We asked for half of the order of jokbal to be not spicy and the other half spicy. GaYeong and I finished every bit of non-spicy jokbal. The other half was too fiery for our tastebuds: one bite and we had to drink a glass of water to put out the fire in our mouths. The jokbal set also came with tteok mandu guk 떡만두국 (rice cake and dumpling soup).

We had this sumptuous meal as our late lunch (2PM), inadvertently avoiding the long queues this restaurant often attracts during lunch and dinner. We walked out of the restaurant staggering in fullness with a doggie bag of spicy jokbal in hand. (Even if the entire order of jokbal were not spicy, we wouldn't have finished it. The set was good for three to four persons and costs KRW 34,000 or about Php 1500.) ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).