Tteokbokki떡볶이

If you don't limit tteokbokki to its chili-paste form, its history goes back to the Joseon era. The original was rice cake stir-fried with soy-sauce-seasoned beef, said to have been enjoyed by the royal court and the scholar-official class. Old records even show it set out on ceremonial tables, and some versions used ingredients ordinary people could rarely get, such as abalone, sea cucumber and beef.

The red version appeared after the Korean War. A frequently told story credits a vendor in Seoul's Sindang-dong with selling wheat-based rice cakes stir-fried with gochujang from the 1950s, and some say it was already on sale there in 1953. American grain aid in the 1950s and a government campaign from the late 1960s encouraging people to eat flour and mixed grains instead of rice helped cheap wheat tteokbokki spread as an everyday snack.

Sindang-dong's tteokbokki alley took shape in the late 1970s and became famous in the 1980s, when each restaurant had its own DJ booth and the cool DJ became the street's symbol. Early tteokbokki was made with gochujang alone, but over time cooks added eggs, noodles and fish cakes, and more recently squid, prawns and cheese, turning a snack into a full meal.