Tteokbokki in Seoul

Over the weekend, we went to the Kyobo bookstore with our obligatory stop by Paris Croissant (upcoming details in another post). Coming out of the bookstore, we noticed an alley with small food stalls and took a closer look.

Armed with just Google Translate on our phones, we stopped by each food stall and asked them what was available that was vegetarian. I was dying to try a type of tteokbokki that I hadn’t prepared at home. I hit the jackpot at Rora Mill!

Wow, this was one spicy mama. Every rice cake I’ve tried in Korea has been superior in texture to all the rice cakes I’ve had in my mostly American life. The chewiness is perfect and you can tell the rice cakes are fresh, not the dry type that you have to soak overnight. You wouldn’t expect something as simple as rice cakes to make a difference in a culinary experience, but it does.

The sauce was more liquid and watery than I expected. I usually make the sauce a lot thicker, so I’m glad I got a taste of authentic tteokbokki. It was a rather sweet sauce too. After a few rice cakes, my nose was running and I needed to have a drink to quench the fire in my mouth. Note to self: Always be equipped with tissues when eating tteokbokki.

The ratio of sauce to rice cake was also more than I expected. It was like a spicy soup with rice cakes swimming in it, which ensures that every piece of rice cake is generously coated with sauce. This is crucial. I love how they cut the rice cakes into shorter lengths than usual, making each one bite-sized, rather than having to take multiple bites per piece. Clearly, this wasn’t their first rodeo.