Restaurant Review: Classic Korean Street Food at Halgatteok 

• Alex Springer

In the years since I've been covering local restaurants, I feel like the Korean food scene in Utah has started to head in an interesting direction. I think we owe a lot of this to local favorites like The Angry Korean, Stun Cube, Bumblebees and CupBop, which have done wonders with introducing Utah diners to the appeal of Korean food. Now that the scene is a bit more confident, the time has come to welcome Halgatteok, a franchise that has over 200 locations in Korea.

The core concept of Halgatteok is a traditional Korean street food dish called tteokbokki (pronounced toke-bo-kee). Tteokbokki is made from cylindrical rice cakes that are extremely chewy. The trademark texture comes from the non-glutinous rice flour that is mixed with salt and hot water, then pounded into a smooth, chewy consistency. While it's still very different, the best approximation I can make is that of Japanese mochi. Once these cakes are prepped and rolled into cylinders that can be as large as hot dogs, they get tossed with a gochujang-based sauce plus boiled eggs, veggies or whatever else sounds good.

Locally, tteokbokki has been on the menu of a few Korean spots; I first tried it at Stun Cube, myself. I liked it enough to get perhaps overly excited when I heard that this Korean restaurant was bringing its tteokbokki-based menu to the Chinatown Supermarket in South Salt Lake.

The menu is set up for you to select the type of rice cake (tteok) that you'd like. I like the ssal tteok, because the tteok is already prepared in smaller, bite-sized pieces, but there is something to be said about the longer, thicker garae tteok, which is served with a pair of kitchen shears to snip it into smaller pieces. From there, diners select the type of sauce and the spice level.

My wife and I visited, so we got both the Grandma Tteokbokki ($13) and the Jjajang Tteokbokki ($13). When you order, you get the option to add a healthy dollop of melted cheese and/or ramen noodles to your dish, and the correct answer to both options is "yes." The portions are pretty huge—I think it's totally reasonable to split one plate of tteokbokki between two people, but too much food is never a bad problem to have.

The tteokbokki plates take a bit of time to prepare, so we also ordered some appetizers. We went with the Mayak Gimbap ($9.50), which are spring roll-adjacent snacks made from rice, spinach, grilled tofu and a spear of pickled radish wrapped up in gim or nori sheets. They come served with a vinegary hot mustard sauce that packs a nice, sinus-clearing punch.

We also ordered the rice ball ($6), which marked one of the first times in a long while that I've been surprised by a dish. On the menu, it's pictured as a row of spheres made from sticky rice and other mix-ins. It arrives at the table as a giant bowl full of rice, scallions, chopped pickles, shredded gim and warm rice, along with a pair of disposable plastic gloves. The idea here is that you make your own rice balls from the provided ingredients, which was honestly quite a lot of fun. Once everything is smushed together, you get a warm, fluffy bite full of briny salt from the gim and acid from the pickles. Of course, you can just dip into this and mix it up with your chopsticks, but I'd recommend putting those gloves to good use.

When our tteokbokki arrived, my wife and I were both impressed with the arrangements. The Grandma Tteokbokki is tossed in a crimson broth, and is touted as the original tteokbokki, so this is where I'd suggest newcomers start. Even at spice level one, this dish has a pretty decent kick. It's not the kind of heat that just burns, however; the flavors are gorgeous. There's a sweetness to the broth that offsets the smoky notes, and it lovingly clings to each rice cake so you don't miss any of it.

I got my Jjajang Tteokbokki at a spice level two, which was definitely my heat limit. One of the things I love about restaurants that come here from overseas is that they have no interest in blunting their heat levels to accommodate American diners. This version of tteokbokki is made with a black bean sauce, which was less sweet and more earthy than the Grandma Ttteokbokki. I got mine with a tangle of ramen noodles and a dollop of melted cheese, both of which made this dish into a grab bag of delightful flavors and textures. I could take or leave the ramen noodles, but that blob of melted cheese is a must.

Whether you're a Korean food expert on the lookout for this traditional fixture of street food or a newbie just trying out something new, Halgatteok is an excellent addition to our local food scene.