Myeongdong Route

What Myeongdong is

Myeongdong is one of central Seoul's foremost shopping quarters. Cosmetics shops and brand stores stand shoulder to shoulder, thronged year-round by tourists from around the world. But the real fun of the walk comes not with daytime shopping but once the sun tilts low. Toward evening, stalls are set up in a long row down the middle of the street, and the whole street turns into an open-air canteen. Smoke rises off tornado potato, hotteok and chicken skewers, and the crowd flows slowly between the carts. This is the hour when the shopping street becomes a street to eat.

What to eat at the stalls

Myeongdong's stalls live by visual liveliness and the ease of eating one-handed. Tornado potato wound on a skewer and fried, seed hotteok packed with brown sugar and seeds, chicken skewers grilled sweet-hot over charcoal, egg bread with a whole egg dropped into a boat of batter. In recent years carts chasing the social-media shot have grown — long-stretched cheese, charcoal-grilled lobster. Yet deeper in the street sit old houses too, like the kalguksu shop Myeongdong Gyoja, founded in 1966. The flashy stall and the unchanging bowl — tasting both on one street is Myeongdong.

How to walk this route

Myeongdong comes into its own from evening. Starting from Metro L4 Myeongdong or L2 Euljiro 1-ga, walk back and forth through the grid of streets, eating as you go. First build a base with a bowl of kalguksu at the old Myeongdong Gyoja, then into the stall streets. Change the taste with tornado potato and chicken skewers, and warm up on the sweetness of hotteok to close. Stalls take mostly cash (won) only, and many sign in Korean alone, so this site lists the Korean for each; showing a photo or the local script makes your plate easier to reach. It is a crowded hour, but the crush itself is the Myeongdong view.