I love Topokki! In fact, I almost always alternate this with kimbap for my afternoon snack at our office caf.
What is Topokki? It’s basically fat tubes of rice cakes and fish cakes in a sweet, spicy red sauce. Add a hardboiled egg and it’s the perfect merienda for me. ☺
Topokki is such a common streetfood in Seoul that most street corners have at least one vendor selling topokki and other usual streetfoods such as odeng (boiled seafood cakes to be eaten with soup) or fried stuffs.
It is the one Korean snack that I love and can eat almost everyday. And because Koreans have a penchant for turning everything they love into junkfoods, is it any wonder that we have Topoki “chips”?
(Or for that matter, Curry Curls, which I also love!)
This is my favorite brand of Topoki Curls. It’s by Kim’s Club. Some Topoki Curls are pretty sweet, so sweet that the hot pepper kick is lost. But this brand has more heat than sweetness! Which is just the way I like it!
To be honest about it, it doesn’t really taste too much as the real topokki, it lacks the slightly seafood-y taste but it’s sweet, extremely crunchy and really spicy! The perfect combination for addicting snack foods for me.
Oh and because I took a picture of my stash of junkfood for the weekend, and since I am too lazy to post them in another entry, haha, here are my favorite junkfoods in Korea:
Melon Popsicle – tastes like honeydew melon + milk.Really creamy with no artificial aftertaste!
Rich Potato Chips- my second ultimate favorite potato chips ( next to Ruffles Texas Style BBQ Chips!). It’s actually labeled as Cheese flavored, but you can't detect the cheese, instead it tastes as if it has been fried in Butter. Really rich and full of umami!
Market-O Real Chocolate Choco Crispy – Basically these are almond toffee chips coated in dark chocolate. The toffee is surprisingly salty, which bodes well with the deep flavor of the chocolate. The good thing about this Crispy Chocolate is that the chocs are in bite-sized individual wrappers. A box contains about 16 bitesizes which, I have to admit, I finished in a day haha!
These are my fave chichirya in Seoul, what’s your ultimate comfort (junk)food?
Mashed potatoes and anything cheesy and buttery! Ooh...the calories! :))
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ReplyDeletei like topokki, but can't say i've had enough to know what good topokki is. i also like checking out the "indigenous" junk food when i'm in a new place and these look really interesting!
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Hi Paul! Thanks for dropping by! I love Topokki :-) There are actually two versions of topokki, both have the same rice cakes but with different sauces~ The Royal Topokki's sauce is made up of sliced meat, carrots, peppers eggs, and a brown sauce. This is usually served in restaurants.
ReplyDeleteThe common topokki, the one I eat most often, is the streetfood version haha! It's sauce is based on the traditional korean hot pepper sauce.
Although I've tried a topokki dish with a carbonara like sauce (cream, bacon and minced veggies):-)
Anyhoo, yep there are a lot of great streetfood in Seoul :-) And I'm planning to blog about them soon haha. Just gathering pics and materials (and also eating haha) before blogging about it:-)
Cheers!
I love that spicy korean rice cake. enjoyed eating it in seoul. and go try market-o brownies, yummm!
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