do-it-yourself lunch at tongin market

it was our 5th day in seoul and we were starting to crave some veggies and something different aside from fried chicken and spicy meat.  the noodle to rice ratio has been completely out of wack for this trip so our attempt to get it back on track started us on a trek to find some tteokbokki (rice cakes).  tongin market is near a nice older village in town (bukchon hanok) so we train’d it out there for lunch.

it’s a small, open air market that’s quite dingy inside.  one long, narrow corridor is all it consists of and each side is packed full of food stalls.

our first stop was the teobokki stand for a snack since we were starting to get hangry

then we picked up our bento boxes, 20 tokens (10k won, ~$12 cad) and made our way back down the alley to stock up

a three-level seating area in the middle of the market sells red bean rice, soup and supposedly hands out free kimchi as well (all gone by the time we got there).  this was our bounty:
haha’s – meat wrapped rice cakes, tempura zucchini, japchae, kimchi pancake, blood sausage and veggies

mine – meat wrapped rice cakes, glazed deep fried pork and some spongy white stuff, kimbap and japchae

my fav meal of our korea trip.  no language barriers to deal with and plenty of choice though i wish we had gotten a smaller order of rice cakes to start.  they started expanding halfway through our meal and both of us were struggling to finish our boxes