“It’s absolutely delicious … probably my favourite street food,” says Heather Jeong. She’s talking about hotteok, a fried, filled pancake that’s popular across Korea, at street stalls and food halls.
The traditional version is sweet, a flattish disk, sometimes like a pancake, sometimes thicker, like a filled doughnut. A mix of sugar, cinnamon and, often, nuts or seeds, is the more traditional filling, creating a hot, gooey, sometimes slightly candied centre, tucked inside the crisp-edge pancake, although savoury versions have become popular too.