Bindaetteok

Thick, savory pancakes ground from soaked mung beans and filled with pork and vegetables.

Bindaetteok is Seoul's most storied street food and one of Korea's oldest pancake traditions, with records of mung-bean pancakes appearing in texts from the Joseon era when they fed both royalty and the poor with equal satisfaction. Unlike flour-based jeon, bindaetteok is built on a batter of stone-ground soaked mung beans, which fries into a pancake that is crisp and golden outside and dense, nutty, and slightly gritty within — a completely different sensory experience from its wheat-flour counterparts. Kimchi, pork, mung-bean sprouts, and green onions are folded into the batter, which is then pressed flat in a generous pool of oil over high heat until the exterior crackles and develops a deep, toasty crust. Gwangjang Market in Seoul is the nation's most famous destination for bindaetteok, where stalls have been turning out these pancakes for decades to a constant crowd of locals and food tourists. The pairing of bindaetteok with makgeolli rice wine is so canonical that the two are considered inseparable companions.