Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Street Vendor Delicacies

If you live in Korea or ever get the chance to venture across the great ocean you should keep one thing in mind...you should never be hungry in Korea.

In addition to the numerous Western style restaurants (Outback, McDonald's, etc.) there are countless Korean style galbi restaurants and Korean BBQ restaurants. And just in case you might be hungry between meals, you can grab a snack with any of dozens of street side vendors.

I have decided to dedicate this post to some of my favorite street vendors. The appeal of these places is that they can pack up and move at any given time. If you happen to be craving a particular vendor, you my roam the streets for hours looking for where he set up shop. Additional appeal comes from the ultimately sanitary conditions in which food is prepared. All sarcasm aside, some of the products are really good!

My first featured vendor is the Egg Bread Man. What?!? You've never heard of Egg Bread? Imagine encompassing a whole egg in sweet pancake batter and then frying it omelet style to a nice golden brown. These are small and inexpensive (500W) but because of the egg and batter, they are very filling. Just one could tide you over any extended time between meals and I've never been able to eat two. Delicious!
My second featured vendor is Heart Attack on a Stick Lady. Why haven't Americans thought of this?? It would be the absolute perfect food to sell at baseball games. Take good old American corn dogs and deep fry French fries right into the batter. Ingenious!!
The batter (fries and all) are hand molded onto the dogs and then deep fried. They squirt a little ketchup on for garnish and taste and create the perfect all-in-one meal. For between 1,000W and 1,500W these are a bargain or a steal depending on your hunger level. Hunger satisfied!
My final featured vendor is the Do We Look Like We're on Fear Factor? Lady. Roasted silk worm pupa, or beon-dae-gi, are either an acquired taste or a delicacy in Korea. I see them often enough...but I never see people eating them.
Boiled on a bed of hot rocks they are often served along side miniature snails which I have no idea how you get out of the shell. I'm just not brave enough to try them. The jury is still out on this one.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I loved this post! You should do a monthly feature of the treasures of the world of street vendors!

WF said...

That would be easy enough. There is no shortage of random food being sold out of the back of a van.