Here, finally, almost exactly five months to the day since we left after our five stay in February and March, is my last report from Seoul. It features a return to what had been my favourite place to visit when I was in Seoul on my own in March 2023: Gwangjang Market. On that occasion I was in the city for a week and Gwangjang Market was a brisk, appetite-stimulating walk from my hotel. I ended up eating dinner there four nights in a row (see here for a general look at the market, and here and here for my meal reports). This time I was back for more than a month but only visited Gwangjang Market three times. This is not because something went wrong with the market in the intervening period but because on this trip, with the family and 22 students in tow, I ventured much further afield, including to several other traditional markets (Cheongnyangni, Namdaemun, Mangwon, Noryangjin Seafood Market). But Gwangjang Market was still the first and last of these that we visited. Here is a look at those visits.

I will admit that the major reason that my Seoul reports have taken so long for me to get done is that I wanted to close the reports with this one. But over the three visits I’d accumulated so many photographs that the thought of putting it together—by which I mean resizing all of them—was too daunting. And so I kept punting and punting and here we are now in August. And even now I’m not going to be giving you the whole report in one go. If you are reading this close to noon, Central time in the United States, you are probably only seeing the first part, covering our first visit. The parts covering the other two visits will go up later today—if you’re interested, keep checking back.

Alright, this first visit took place four or five days after we arrived in Seoul. I’d obviously wanted to take the family to Gwangjang Market and a couple of my students wanted to go with us as well. We arrived in the evening on a Friday to find the market buzzing. By the evening the stores proper have mostly closed in the market so the action is entirely food-related. I’d told my students about Netflix-famous Cho Yonsoon’s kalguksu stand and they wanted to try it. At my solo dinner there in 2023 I had not had her kalguksu and so I was curious too. The missus, however, wanted to try other things and so she and the boys splintered off while I took my students to Cho Yonsoon’s stall. We had to wait a few minutes and then three seats opened up together. Two of us got the basic kalguksu and the third got the kalguksu with dumplings. I had the regular kalguksu and I can confirm what many others have said since Street Food Asia: Seoul made her famous: her kalguksu is very good but is not really very different from many others you can find with less fuss at Gwangjang Market itself or at many other places in the city. Still, I’m glad I tried it and my students liked it too.

After we got done we located the family. The students branched off to go do whatever shenanigans they had planned for the evening. We wandered the market a little bit more, buying some banchan to take home to our apartment to eat over the next week, and also eating some twisted donuts. Inevitably, there’s a famous twisted donut stand in one corner of the market that you can stand in a long queue for. Our second visit to the market a few weeks later was with a friend who insisted on standing in that line. On this occasion, however, we got twisted donuts with no fuss from a stand next to the banchan people and they were very good indeed.

Here is photographic proof of all of the above.

Here is the second part. This covers a visit a few weeks later when we were joined by a friend who was in town for a week and who was with us at most of our meals that week (at Soul Dining, at Wonjo Agujjim, at Obok, etc. etc.).

I think our plan when we arrived at the market was just to eat bindaetteok (which Gwangjang Market is quite famous for). Well, we started out eating quite a bit of bindaetteok, at a vendor right in the center, where the food alleys intersect. I think this might be another Netflix-famous place. I don’t know if their bindaetteok is better than everybody else’s (I doubt it) but it was pretty good. In addition to the tables by the bindaetteok-frying operation out in the open, there’s also an indoor restaurant. We sat outside and only ordered bindaetteok but you can order from the rest of the restaurant menu as well.

This was not a small amount of food but we decided not to let a small thing like being full stop us from eating more. Accordingly, we sat down at another vendor’s counter to eat gimbap, soondae, jokbal and more. The market was even busier on this visit and so we just sat down at the first place that could fit all five of us. Everything we ate here was excellent as was the vibe.

It was necessary to eat something sweet to end. Our friend wanted to try the twisted donut from the famous place and so we stood in line for a change. Luckily, while the line is long, it moves very quickly. We got some twisted donuts—very good—and then some fish-shaped pastries for good measure.

Here is the visual confirmation:

And here is the final installment in this report. This was our last visit to Gwangjang Market on this trip, and our/my first time there for lunch (this was also my first time eating indoors at Gwangjang Market). For some reason I had thought that the food scene at the market was more of an evening thing but it was as busy during the day as I’ve ever seen it at night and the market as a whole even more crowded as the regular stores were also open. I was there mostly to eat some yukhoe (this time without the squirming octopus tentacles). There are a number of specialists in the market, including one that has a Bib Gourmand from Michelin (and consequently very long waits), but yukhoe was not the only thing we wanted to eat. And so we ended up at Shingchanshin Yukhoe, also near the intersection of the food alleys, who serve many other things besides.

The restaurant consists of one mid-sized dining room. You sit where you can and may possibly have neighbours at communal tables. Ordering happens quickly and the food comes out quickly as well. We got the yukhoe, yes, but also tteokbokki (for which the missus has a bottomless appetite), tuk baegi bulgogi (bulgogi in broth, basically) and janchi guksu (aka banquet noodles). All were very good indeed and all were reasonably priced.

And here are the photographs.

So that is my Seoul reports from February and March finally put to bed. These won’t be my last Seoul reports ever, however. We will probably be back there for a week next summer fine-tuning things for the next iteration of my program. And that next iteration will find us back in Seoul for another five weeks in 2026. The only difference—and it’s a significant one—is that instead of being there in the winter, in February/March, the next run of the program will put us in Seoul in the spring and summer, in May/June. I look forward to seeing what the city is like in other seasons as well.

Now, with the Seoul and New York/New Jersey reports all done, the only things in my backlog are the remaining reports from California in June. I have a bunch of reports to come from San Francisco and Menlo Park and then a few more from Los Angeles. I’ll post one or two of those a week through the end of September, probably. The Twin Cities reports will continue to be posted regularly on Tuesdays. Next up from here: a look at a very recent dinner at Hai Hai.