Topokki in red sauce simmers scrumptiously on a big square pan. The cook is busy serving up the hot steamy treat as soon as it’s ready. Topokki’s spiciness is enough to make you sweat.

-It’s spicy, but deliciously spicy. The color is that of thick chili and the sauce is great for dipping Korean sausage and fried stuffs.
-My nose is running because it’s so hot. Eating spicy food relieves me of stress.

Runny nose and sweaty face - people sure don’t look pretty when eating topokki. But it appears to be a magic cure for stress. What is the magic of topokki?

-You don’t get tired of eating topokki.
-Korea’s topokki has mother’s love.
-It’s very simple, yet hearty. It has something very Korean, unlike bread.
-Topokki is versatile. There can be many different versions of topokki. The change is infinite.
-Topokki has a deeper flavor than spaghetti. Its chewy texture seems to contain some kind of story.
-Kimchi used to be Korea’s most well-known food. Now it’s topokki!

When you get off subway lines 2 and 6 at Shindang Station of you will locate the Shindang-dong Topokki Town. Behind the large blue sign stand rows and rows of topokki stores. The first topokki you see will be Grandma Ma Bok-lim’s tppoki restaurant, where the legend of Shindan-dong topokki started. Not an empty seat in the house, the eatery lives up to the reputation as the origin of Shindan-dong topokki

Topokki is cooked on a portable stove atop each table. The temperature inside the topokki eatery soon soars with the heat from the stoves and diners. Some topokki maniacs travel all the way from other parts of the country to drool at the thick boiling red and delicious concoction.

-I’m from Busan. Shindan-dong is famous for topokki, so I came to try it out. It’s delicious, the ingredients are plenty, and the texture is different. I want to recommend this to my friends back in Busan.
-I sometimes come here with my family. It tastes just in the old days. My children like it, too. Topokki is especially good with my family on a rainy day.

The Shindan-dong Topokki Town is a favorite destination for couples out on a date or for families eating out. It’s also a perfect place for students on a shoe string budget to fill up their stomachs. But when did all this start? Here’s Kim Gil-ja, Grandma Ma Bok-lim’s youngest daughter-in-law, to answer that question.

My mother-in-law told me that she started it during the Korean War. So the store is more than 50 years old. She started out as a street vendor in this area. Then other topokki vendors came and after a while a topokki alley was formed. So the place has a long history and my mother-in-law was the first one to start.

Grandma Ma Bok-lim’s topokki is the original gochujang or spicy pepper sauce topokki. Finger-thin rice cakes, fried dumplings, fish cakes, noodles, and an egg goes into one big shallow pan and Grandma Ma Bok-lim’s secret sauce is added. Then the whole thing begins to boil. The sight and sound, as well as the aroma of topokki are enough to make your mouth water. People who taste this topokki once can’t help but come back for more, because the flavor is unforgettable and addictive.

-I can’t forget this flavor. It’s delicious comfort food. What sets this place apart from other topokki place is that the sauce is so appetizing. This has been my favorite eatery for over 28 years.

Various ingredients and Grandma Ma Bok-lim’s special sauce combine to create a tempting dish that appeals to just about everyone. The secret to the popularity of Grandma Ma Bok-lim’s topokki is in its deliciously spicy gochujang sauce. Its recipe was a closely guarded secret until Grandma Ma Bok-lim finally passed it down recently to her son and daughter-in-law.

My mother-in-law’s gochujang sauce was what made her topokki so famous. Nobody knew the recipe. The origin of Shindan-dong topokki was Ma Bok-lim and she taught us to focus only on making topokki. She let us have the recipe just recently. She didn’t want anyone to know her secret. She first taught her son, then me, because I was the one running the business. I worked as her apprentice for about 15 years before learning the sauce recipe. My mother-in-law told me that she’s proud and confident that her sauce is better than other topokki makers.

If you can’t take the heat, then there are other milder versions of topokki. This is the appeal of Korean topokki. It can be transformed into many different versions to suit anyone’s taste. Here’s Director Lee Sang-hyo of the Topokki Food Research Institute to explain more.

Topokki is a simple dish, which is why it’s easy to standardize the recipe and make more variations with different ingredients and sauces. The sauce base is Korea’s spicy gochujang, but the old royal topokki recipe calls for soy sauce. These days there’s even doenjang sauce based on Korean bean paste. You can add different extras like meat, seafood, mushrooms, vegetables, and even cheese, and make different sauces using ingredients from other countries like curry and chili. Topokki can incorporate flavors of other cuisines.

Stretching for about 100 meters, the main street of the Shindang-dong Topokki Town is lined with various topokki eateries. Diners have fun trying to decide which place to go. Shindan-dong is also the place for foreigners who can’t take the heat of spicy topokki. Now it’s only a matter time before topokki becomes everyone’s favorite all over the world.

-I love it, because I can taste different topokki. Rice crust topokki is really delicious and so is the one with seafood.
-Topokki is delicious.
-I had garlic topokki, Shanghai topokki, chili topokki and royal topokki. I liked garlic topokki the best.
-Very hot, little spicy, but delicious.

The Korean government has chosen topokki as Korea’s representative dish, together with bibimbap, makgeoli, and kimchi. A topokki festival is held every year to develop unique sauces and advertise the new topokki versions to the public. This year the second Seoul Topokki Festival was held from May 7th through 9th at aT Center in southern Seoul.

This year’s festival offered a wide range of topokki dishes, from the basic gochujang topokki to the fusion versions using cream, red ginseng, garlic, chili, barbecue sauce, steak, and salad ingredients. The milder and more exotic topokki dishes were targeted at foreigners, and sure enough they can’t seem to resist the tempting smell and sight of colorful topokki.

-I’m having some sample topokki. The ddeok and fried stuff go well together.
-I had some barbecue topokki, chili topokki, and black bean paste topokki. I think foreigners would like it because those dishes are not spicy.
- I looked around for two hours and everything’s so fun. Topokki has really been reinvented. I only knew the red topokki, but others taste just as good.

The festival’s highlight was the world topokki cooking contest. Competitors were divided into two categories – students and general contestants. Roughly 60 different topokki recipes were tried out that day and all of them demonstrated great ideas for globalizing Korean people’s favorite street food. Here are some of the secret recipes revealed.

-I used bulgogi, the most well-known Korean dish. Bulgogi was combined with some western features to make a different kind of topokki.
- I used ddeok made of sweet potato. Anyone can make it and it’s delicious. It’s slightly spicy, yet sweet, so foreigners will like it too.
-The sauce is made with ginseng-infused gochujang. I’ve put in some paprika to add texture.

Surprisingly there are even foreign contestants. They are extremely satisfied to have completed Korea’s favorite snack.

-I’m going to enjoy myself cooking Korean food. I’m going to make topokki to my friends and family back home.
-I entered the contest because I love Korean food. Topokki is the best. I’m so glad that I took part in the contest. I like topokki very much.

They have 40 minutes to finish topokki creations that will delight the taste buds of people around the world. The convention hall is soon filled with mouthwatering aromas. It’s hard to predict which dish is going to win, since all of them look exceptionally original and tasty. But a winner has to be decided and here’s the winner!

The Seoul Topokki Festival has demonstrated that topokki can undergo many transformations to appeal to foreigners. Adding a topokki-tasting itinerary in travel packages would draw more tourists to try this unique Korean food. What do foreigners who have actually tasted topokki think?

-I’m from Japan and topokki is my favorite Korean food. It’s a bit spicy and ddeok is soft and chewy.
- We wanted to learn how to cook it. I want to do this for my friends and family.
-Topokki is delicious. Very good. I love topokki.

Topokki is not longer just street food. It now represents Korea just like kimchi and bulgogi. Here’s our advice to foreigners who have whetted their appetite for topokki with mild versions. Challenge yourself to taste the spicy original version of topokki at any one of thousands of topokki places scattered all over the nation.