Seoul Street Food: What It Is, What It Costs, Where It Is

Pojangmacha means 'covered wagon', and the name covers everything from a griddle on a trolley to an orange-tented tent-bar with plastic stools where people drink soju until two in the morning.

The daytime version barely exists. Carts appear as the offices empty, from about 16:00, and the good ones have a queue by seven. They pack down between ten and eleven, earlier in winter. That schedule is the single most useful fact on this page: arriving on a cart street at two in the afternoon and finding nothing is a common and avoidable disappointment.

The tented bar version is a different institution — a sit-down operation serving grilled intestines, spicy chicken feet and seafood alongside the drink, and it runs late into the night in the older parts of Jongno and around Euljiro. It is not aimed at visitors, and it is all the better for that.

One practical note: cards work at most carts now, but cash is faster, and some of the smallest operations still prefer it.

Myeongdong is the famous one and the most expensive: the carts run down the middle of the main lane from four in the afternoon, the range is the widest, and you pay perhaps a third more than elsewhere for the convenience and the theatre.

Gwangjang Market is the better food. The food street opens at nine and runs to eleven at night all year, the dishes are older and more regional, and a full lunch of three plates costs about ₩10,000 rather than ₩15,000 of snacks.

Namdaemun does the market version for people who are working: kalguksu, hotteok and griddled snacks, cheaper again, and gone by early evening.

For the neighbourhood version, Mangwon and Tongin markets sell to residents rather than to visitors, and the prices show it. Tongin's brass-token system — buy coins at the desk, spend them stall to stall — is the most enjoyable ₩10,000 in the palace quarter.

Follow the queue. Turnover is the only meaningful hygiene signal on a street, and a stall with ten people waiting has cooked everything in the last twenty minutes.

Check the board before you order. Every cart displays prices; the ones that do not are the ones that quote after you have eaten.

Eat standing at the cart rather than walking. This is the local convention, it keeps the food hot, and on a crowded lane it is the difference between enjoying it and wearing it.

Watch the chilli. Tteokbokki ranges from mild to genuinely fierce, and the sauce is sweet enough that the heat arrives late. If you are unsure, the fishcake skewers and their broth are the safe order.

And treat the cart as a course rather than a meal. Two or three items from a street plus a market plate is a good evening; six carts in a row is a stomach ache and about ₩25,000 gone.