Given Korea’s small area, taking the car or
going by bus between cities, be it for business or leisure, is often an
excellent choice when moving around in the country. Like mentioned before, if
you are lucky with the traffic, a trip from the Seoul area down to Gwangju or
Busan might only take about 5 hours. While traveling, Koreans never forget the
motto ‘Getting there is half the fun’ and therefore they never fail to make frequent
pit stops along the way. While taking intercity buses or going with tours, the
driver usually stops every two hours for toilet visits and snack times. Now, in
other countries these pit stop areas might differ from place to place but in
Korea they are fairly homogeneous, and the food they have on offer there is
what I will write about in this post.
First of all, what every rest stop has is a
music store. Here the customer gets a chance to refill his CD or cassette
library of Korean classics dating a few decades back. The stores usually pump
their music on maximum volume which produces a lovely atmosphere for all of us
who whole-heartedly enjoy this kind of music (no irony intended whatsoever……. ^^).
Secondly, the bigger pit stop stations
offer Korean food cooked on order, which is similar to any other restaurant you
can find in the cities, although a wee bit pricier. On the menu here are
bibimbap, ramyeon, tonkatsu, kimbap, bulgogi etc. Adjacent to these restaurants
are usually a small supermarket providing candy, chocolate and other snacks and
drinks.
Thirdly, and quite uniquely for these rest
stops are the food served through counters facing the parking area. Below is a snapshot
of some of these snacks and the menu, which includes ddukbokki, “vegetable food
stick”, chicken on-a-stick, sausage on-a-stick, fried potato balls, small
pieces of fried chicken (called “popcorn chicken” here), deep-fried battered
sausages, walnut pastries, dumplings, rice cake, toasts etc. etc. These dishes
are somewhat similar to the street food in any big city, but some of these rest
stops are actually famous nationwide for particular snacks and these areas are
always bustling with life. So next time you travel within the country, do as
the Koreans do and devour some of these beauties on-a-stick.
