안녕하세요
(hello) 👋🏼
With not being able to freely travel internationally for over a year and half now…we are all slowly going mad, if we haven’t already 😅 So a day trip to Korea town in Shanghai was a nice lil escape and I felt like I was whisked away to one of my favorite places in the world, Korea 😭🇰🇷🕺🏻
Korea town in Shanghai is a bit outta the way if you live across the river in Pudong. Soooo it took around 45 minutes to get there by car 🚗 otherwise it’s over an hour on the metro. The stop closest to the area we were in is Ziteng Rd or Longbai Xincun both on line 10.
There are several plazas and areas over here. Honestly if you arrive and just walk around you’re bound to find cute cafes, hip markets and Korean style everything. If you wanna just head to the area I would put in Hongquan Lu into didi and go from there. I’ll leave what we did exactly down below. You’ve been warned…it’s mostly food!! 😆🍚🥩🥬
We first stopped at Seoul Plaza Mansion and had lunch at 阿姨汤饭面馆(虹泉路店) 2F. (Wechat translation Auntie Tang Fan Noodle Shop (Hongquan Road Branch)) Here we ordered Korean style stew 🍲 And it was mm mmmmmm good!
Here’s the thing about Korean food. It comes with allllllll the sides dishes or banchan 반찬 in Korean. We are talking kimchi (duh) radish, chives, garlic, onion, green peppers, and many sauces. Your table will be full!
My spicy tofu stew or sundubu-jjigae 순두부찌개 came with a big side of rice, 🍚 seaweed and greens. It was delicious and I’m craving it as I type 😋 I’ve read you can have the soup as is, or put in spoonfuls of rice as you go. The waiter insisted on translating for me “this food is stinky” did this stop me? No, no it did not. It was stinkin good!! 😆
After lunch we stayed in this plaza and did a little shop. There were more clothes and fashion in this plaza but nothing that caught my eye. I did buy a makeup cushion from Clio which I highly recommend 👍🏼 we stumbled upon a Korean super market called K mart 🛒 where I found Dr. Pepper 🙀 so yes, I for sure bought it along with some cheese crackers I used to get all the time living in Hong Kong. 😬
Snack break!!! So because we were in Korea Town we HAD to get the cheese corndogs that are so popular. So it’s a sausage dipped in batter with cheese, topped with ramen noodle sprinkles and sugar on top. Look, that sounds weird but omg, I loved it! 😂😋 秋博士热狗棒(井亭天地店) (Wechat translation -Dr. Qiu hot dog stick (Jingting heaven and earth shop)) this place was right on ground level in front of Jingting Tiangdi complex.
After this we took a 10ish minute stroll to find a bookstore we had seen online. This bookstore is actually the lobby of a hotel called Atour Hotel. It’s attached to Aegean Shopping Mall. We spent some time here just sitting and enjoying the peace but also reenacting scenes from Beauty and the Beast 😅 🎭
We couldn’t go to Korea Town without eating Korean BBQ! And there were soooo many options to chose from. We honestly just found one that had people waiting outside knowing that it should be good and the place we chose did not disappoint! The service was amazing and quick. As soon as we ordered by scanning their QR code, our banchan 반찬 (side dishes arrived), hot coal was placed under our grill, a server came and poured a stream of egg and cheesy corn that surrounded our grill which honestly is genius 🙌🏼 a worker also helped us cook our meat 🥩 the place we had our meats was 善煜熟成和牛烤肉 (韩国街店) 3F (wechat translation Sun Yuk Cooked Wagyu Beef Roast (Korea Street Shop)) at Jingting Tian Plaza back at the street we had started at!
Ok so with Korean BBQ it can be a bit overwhelming 🤯 I like to make lil tacos with the lettuce 🥬 they give us. Dip the meat into the sauces and add some kimchi and it’s 🙌🏼 we also ordered a kimchi pancake which was delicious also! 😋
Last but not least….dessert. Yes, we ate more food! In the same shopping center we found this cute dessert cafe Luo Cake韩式甜品·蛋糕·咖啡 3F (wechat translation Korean Dessert · Cake · Coffee)) we ordered the mango bing soo, 빙수which is pretty much shaved ice with fresh mango and ice cream on top and of course like every other meal we had it was 👏🏼
I absolutely recommend making the trek out here if you’re in Shanghai! Especially if you love everything Korean like me!! 😅
random tips 👇🏼👇🏼
- All the Chinese names of these places are findable on didi if you copy paste them (I tried 👍🏼)
- For some reason…we were hot everywhere we went. Even inside the plazas/shopping centers. Sooo keep that mind when picking something to wear. 🥵
- Since we are still in a pandemic. Most places required a mask and green QR code so have those handy. 📱
- There’s also a night market which looked like fun! A long row of tents and pop up restaurants/cafes. By 5:45pm they were all opening up.
Kitty&Co. 