Reply 1988 | Brazil Tteokbokki, Seosan — The Snack Shop, Rebuilt

Brazil Tteokbokki is the shop the Ssangmun-dong kids treat as a second home. The name was not invented — there really was a Brazil Tteokbokki near Jeongui Girls' High School in Ssangmun-dong, trading until the late 1990s, and the writers put it in because at least one of them clearly grew up on that street.

The filming, though, happened 130 kilometres away, at a snack shop called Yalgae Bunsik in Haemi-myeon, Seosan. It has since renamed itself Brazil Tteokbokki Yalgae Bunsik, which tells you how the last decade went.

Be warned about one thing the guides do not mention: the building is not the building from the drama. Visitors who came before and after report it was rebuilt, and while the food and the owners carried over, the frontage you will photograph is not the frontage on screen. Several people have said, reasonably, that they wish it had been renovated rather than replaced.

It is one dish, done properly — rice cakes in a mild anchovy broth, and at the end you mix rice and seaweed flakes into what is left, which is the part everyone talks about. Around 5,000 won. Cash only. Open eleven to six.

Haemi Fortress is a five-minute walk away, so this pairs into a real afternoon rather than a detour.

Order it, and do the rice at the end. The set is gone and the building is new, but a bowl of tteokbokki eaten slowly by teenagers who have nowhere else to be is the one thing about this drama that has not changed at all.

Cover photo: Haemi Eupseong, the fortress next door, by Lawinc82, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Neighbouring landmark, not the shop.