Uyen Nguyen

Really yummy croissants! This is my first time trying croissants with cream and fruits in the middle and it is pretty amazing though not easy to eat without making your hands dirty. There was a short line when I came at ~3pm and many of the pastry/desserts were gone already so come early!

Namdaemun market is good if you want to buy stuff from general stores like clothing, suitcases, food, skincare, etc. There are only a few food stands here. The best one is the bao place in photos 1 and 2. They have 2 flavors: original and kimchi. The bao skin is quite thin, but quality is not consistent because we come back the next day and it is thicker. The 2nd place also has baos, but it is not as good. But they have really good fried dumplings. The sticky tteok and sausage is lame. The fried cake with veggie and cheese filling is also lame. But they have a nearby stall that sells similar thing, but no veggie and cheese flavor, that has a lot of people lining up. The grilled rice cake is pretty lame.

Stopped by for a quick dinner before Lucha Libre, and were pretty satisfied. We didn't expect the quesa birria to be this huge. Lots of cheese and seasoned meat. Flan is okay, a little too dense for my liking. Restaurant was spacious, and food came put pretty fast.

Lots of snacks around this area at night. The gordita is pretty good with onion, cilantro, chicharron, cheese. Fried plantain is great too with jam, condensed milk, and cinnamon. For fries, ours is a little cold, would recommend you get from a place that just fries a new batch. It has ketchup, cheese, mayo, chilli. For the chips, they add lemon juice, chilli, and a black sauce. It is too sour for me. Both drinks are pretty good. For the cup with sugar, the sugar has a fruit flavor, and it varies on the color (i.e. blue would be blueberry). You can choose to have sangria, lemon sprite kinda thing, or carbonated water. Esquites is okay, until we see a worm in the cup 💀 and just throw the whole thing away. Everything is very cheap, from 10 pesos to 40 pesos.

This market has a couple of food stalls, but they focus more on exotic food like bugs, spiders, etc. I didn't try but if it is something you want to try, go here; otherwise, you can skip.
We try chilaquiles at a food stall and it's okay. Chilaquiles is like chips in a lot of salsa with onion, cheese, some type of cream, and protein, in this case beef. It is not too spicy, at least the salsa here. I think it's good because I like the texture of the soaked chips, but don't eat too slow because then it will be too soggy.