Duteoptteok and Jatseolgi

Duteoptteok, 3500 won 

Jatseolgi, 2500 won

Biwon Tteokjip

If you’re in shopping in Seoul and want to also indulge in a little time-travel, check out the shops officially designated as “oraegagye” by the local government. Since 2017, this program has celebrated “oldest” shops that have been open for more than 30 years, have had more than two generations of leadership, or have an owner recognized as a holder of intangible cultural heritage.   

Biwon Tteokjip is a oraegagye shop selling traditional Korea confectionery near the Gyeongbokgung Palace. The business was founded in 1949 on the strength of royal court recipes shared by the last imperial cuisine master of the Joseson Dynasty. As far as I can tell, Biwon is still operated by the original owner’s extended family. 

The shop looks extremely modern and rather bland from outside, but when you get through the glass doors there’s a gleaming display case covered in black lacquer and lavishly inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The case holds the day’s offerings—all conveniently labeled in both Korean and English. 

 

Plump and plushy duteoptteok is a dumpling about the size of sleeping hamster, made from sticky rice, white beans, walnuts, pine nuts, chestnuts, jujube, honey, and citron—it’s a lot of textures and flavors in a cuddly little package! Jatseolgi is a comparatively stripped-down square of just white rice and pine nuts; the texture is both sticky and cake-like, with the clean sweetness of the rice allowing the scent and flavor of the pine nuts to shine. 

Biwon Tteokjip
33-1 Bukchon-ro
Jongno-ku

Seoul

Uiro at “Time Corridors”

Time Corridors 

¥ 1500 for tea service and admission

Opened in 2022, artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Time Corridors” museum is one of the newest attractions on Naoshima, the “art island” in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. Getting tickets is a little tricky—they’re timed and limited in number and the website is not especially user-friendly—so I was lucky to stumble right in just as they opened for the morning. The galleries house many iconic examples of Sugimoto’s work in a custom-built setting that manages to be both brutalist and emotionally sensitive. 

The admission fee includes tea and a sweet served in the Lounge. One room has tables made from the trunks of ancient holy trees, while the other has less exciting furniture but a better view of the glass tea room installed in a kind of moat outside the building (the tea room is mesmerizing even when empty and I can only imagine that I saw it in use I’d be speechless for days!).  

I ordered matcha and the sweet of the day, a serviceable uiro. On the spectrum of rice-based treat textures, uiro tends to be on the stodgier end—imagine mochi mixed with Big League Chew. I ate my way through it carefully and savored having a little extra time to look out at the tea house and the view of the island. 

Noshi Ume

Noshi Ume, 乃し梅 

from ¥ 648 for 5 pieces

Like many things that we now enjoy as treats (soda, hard candy, mints…), noshi ume started life as medicine. The recipe for a plum-based throat soother may have originated in Nagasaki, but then travelled to Yamagata Prefecture in the 1600s. In the 1800s, a gelatinizer of powdered seaweed (kanten or agar) was added to improve and stabilize the texture. 

Today the 5th generation owners of Satoya make noshi ume using sour, aromatic plums from Yamagata. Thick slices of the chewy, sticky gel are packaged as they have been for over a hundred years, between dried bamboo leaves; simply peel back the leaves to nibble away without dirtying your hands (and then toss the “wrapper” in the compost!). Nostalgic, portable, and delicous, noshi ume can be found in the souvenir section of many department store food halls throughout Japan. 

If you like fruit roll-ups, membrillo, or even gummi bears, this is a treat to seek out. Satoya also sells shigure, strips of noshi ume rolled in sugar, for those who prefer their plum goo a little chewier and crunchier. 

 

Coffee Karintō

Coffee Karintō

コヒーカリン糖

¥100

Karintō are crunchy, bite-sized batons of yeasted wheat dough that is deep fried and coated, most often with a sweet glaze. 

Like most wheat-based treats, karintō were originally brought to Japan from another country, but it’s uncertain whether they were introduced by the Chinese in the 700s or the Portuguese in the 1500s. At any time during that span, both wheat and sugar were so expensive that karintō would have been a luxury food. As the availability of these ingredients increased and prices came down, karintō would have become more common; street vendors began selling them by the mid-1800s. 

Traditionally glazed with either white or brown sugar, modern karintō are available in a wide variety of flavors such as ginger and coffee. I purchased these from a Tokyo branch of Daiso, the   Japanese version of a dollar store. 

Matsukaze

Matsukaze

¥970 / box of 10 pieces 

On my first morning in Kyoto and I headed out early enough to see tiny school children delightedly greeting their classmates and elderly joggers charging up miniature Mt. Funaoka. As I wandered east past the Daitokuji complex, I spotted a building across the street with all the classic indicators (weatherbeaten wooden sign, sliding doors, minimalist display window, verdigris lamp) that something inside is both edible and old-fashioned. 

Approaching the window I saw a hanging scroll, a single peony, and a plate with two slices of cake and a hand-painted label. Among the jumble of kanji were two that I could make out: “pine” and “wind.” And just then, through the fabric of my mask, I caught a whiff of something rich, sweet, and a little funky! 

The 250-year-old confectionery Matsuya Tobei is famed for matsukaze (“wind in the pines”) an unusually savory cake made from flour, sugar, malt, white miso, salted soybeans, and sesame seeds. The miso already nudges this moist, dense cake in a distinctly umami direction, but then it’s topped with fermented, salted black soybeans called Daitokuji natto (a “dry” natto, so no slime in sight). As an emotional eater, I am not unfamiliar with the taste of tear-soaked cake, and that’s the closest comparison I can offer. 

Matsukaze is used in autumn for tea ceremony but is very nice with coffee at any time of the year—and thank goodness! As it’s only sold by the box, I had a little more than I could handle and was able to distribute the excess at breakfast at my guest house. People from 5 different countries agreed: matsukaze was unlike any cake they’d ever had before. 

Matsuya Tobei 

Daitokuji Kitaoji, Kita-ku (in front of Daitokuji-mae bus stop) 

075-492-2850

Danpatjuk and Sipjeondaebotang

Danpatjuk and Sipjeondaebotang

The Second Best in Seoul

If you arrive in Seoul feeling cruddy, there’s a silver lining: many must-try Korean delicacies emerged from food-as-medicine traditions. After 15 hours on the plane and 30 feverish hours in bed, I was happy to spend a couple of hours slowly making my way across town to a little cafe called The Second Best in Seoul. 

Founded in 1976, the shop’s original stock-in-trade was the medicinal tea sipjeondaebotang (one website offers the poetic translation, "wholly and dearly protect and preserve everything”), a murky brew of 10 different roots and herbs including peony, milkvetch, angelica, lovage, cinnamon, and licorice. It looked like a mud puddle, tasted slightly abusive, and made me feel noticeably perkier. 

Having taken my medicine, I enjoyed my reward: a helping of danpatjuk, the hearty sweet porridge for which the shop is currently famous. Rather than letting all the ingredients stew together, Second Best assembles each bowl to order; this allows customers to savor the range of flavors and textures contributed by the silky red bean soup, meaty whole red beans, gummy ginkgo nuts, bready chestnuts, and gooey rice cake. 

From the unassuming name to the vintage decor, everything about The Second Best in Seoul is humble, straightforward, and welcoming. The menu also includes ginger and jujube tea, cinnamon punch, and a fermented rice drink. 

The Second Best in Seoul
서울서 둘째로 잘하는 집
122-1 Samcheong-ro
Jongno-gu, Seoul

South Korea

Goshiki-mame

Goshiki-mame 五色豆
Sohonten Funabashi Mamecho Shoten, from ¥270 for 100g

Goshiki-mame, or five-color beans, have been popular Kyoto souvenir since the Taisho era more than a century ago. At the core of each crunchy little pebble is a roasted bean; as with konpeito, the core is repeatedly tumbled in a vat of melted sugar until a substantial candy coating builds up. The colors represent the north, south, east, and west districts of Kyoto, with the fifth color (brown) representing the Imperial Palace. Brown definitely tastes of cinnamon (an appropriately elite flavoring back in the day) and yellow is ginger, but the others…?  

I found these in a little shop next to the Nishijin Textile Center. I was temped by the wooden gift boxes of goshiki-mame and candied sweet potato, but already weighed down by more sweets that I could safely consume. Luckily, they also sell loose mame in smaller quantities from boxes so I got a small handful bundled up in the shop’s wrapping paper.

Sohonten Funabashi Mamecho Shoten 総本家 船橋豆長

396 Tatemonzencho

Kamigyo Ward 

Kyoto 602-8434

Japan