 Are they trying to make soju healthy right now? Okay, okay, okay. You tell me what to do, you tell me how to eat it. $3.50, Boba Hack in K-Town. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the very first edition of Koreatown Cheap Eats here in New York City. Now a lot of people come to K-Town, New York for a number of things to party at the clubs, to do karaoke, to eat Korean barbecue, but today we're gonna show you how to do it on the cheap because there are a lot of great, affordable street foods out here. But starting off, David, at our number one spot, of course you got to come here. If it's your first time in K-Town, this is Worry Jip. It is a place that powers the lunch crowd. It's also a place that powers the young party crowd. Yeah, man, it might feel like Hongdae on a Friday or Saturday night in here. Let's check it out, Worry Jip. All right, so we're inside of Worry Jip. As you can see, the lunch crowd is going crazy. This clearly is one of the spots that powers the lunch crowd in K-Town. So this is a great place to start, but first we gotta meet up with our friends Sam and Adam, who actually started their very own sneaker brand. So, let's meet them. What's up? What up? What's up? What's up? Is this your sneaker brand right here? Yes, sir. These are the 1587s. These are the 8K87s. Nice. They're looking clean, man. Hopefully, you don't get any kimchi on them. All right, Sam, so I've been here before, but you are Korean, so you gotta let us know what are the steps? How should we go? What are the go-tos? Because I would say for a lot of people who aren't familiar, this is their very first time being in this atmosphere, right? They make it really presentable, right? They show you exactly what it is. It's out here. It's not too much food, and so you get to kind of try a little bit of everything. So it depends. If you're coming here for lunchtime, some kimbap is like, you know, real easy. You want to get a little bit more frisky. You know, you might be trying some of the tteokbokki, right? Like, you get a little bit of that spice. But you also got to get the kimchi, and I love how they have it packaged here. Then you got the mung bean over here, right? And then you also got the cucumber. So you got all different kinds. Like, if you're not feeling like the napa cabbage, then you get the kimchi. All right. There's a lot of different types of kimchi out here at Warty Gym. I do see that they're, you know, adding some new items. They got the mushroom kale. You got to get with the health grind, right? Yeah, that's right. All right, so we're in the soup section. Now, for lunchtime, would you get a different soup than you would get late at night with the soju and stuff like that? It depends, right? If it's wintertime, you always got to go with the sundubu, like, breakfast at night. But this, like, hangover soup, any one of these soups is going to be good for that. At what point do you go for the radish, the soybean radish, or the kimchi pork stew? So the soybean radish is a little bit more, like, maybe in the morning time, but you might want to have that in the morning. But then, like, you might want the sundubu, right, at night time to make sure that you don't wake up with the hangover. Personally, I like to make sure that you either get the seafood in there or the pork. They got different types of rice. I think they have white rice, brown rice, and then they have the wild rice, which is, like, the purple, like, kind of black rice. Also, like, hemibob right now is, like, super popular at the brown rice, because it's supposed to be healthier, it's less fattening. That's popping with all the Korean moms right now. Right, and then Koreans, if they all about the health and the skin and looking good and the modeling, you gotta think about the brown rice. All right, Sam, we're here at the kimbap section, and you tell us the significance of kimbap in a lunch diet. So kimbap's, like, super important, right? It's got all the ingredients. It's got rice, it's got vegetables, it's got meat, and it's a very quintessential Korean dish. So, like, you can have it breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but lunchtime is really when you have it. It's so easy to eat. Kimbap is definitely one of the ways to go, and there's also different kinds of meats that you put in there, whether it's the sausage, right, or you can go with the spam. You can go with the chicken. All right, Sam, we are here at the iconic drink section, and I don't think it's wordy jip without the drinks, right? So tell me the significance of all the different. You know, you have makgeolli, you have soju, I mean, you have the vexedju. These are, like, the OG drinks, right? These are, like, the quintessential Korean-American alcoholic drinks. So, like, way back in the day, hundreds of years ago, you had all the men just drinking makgeolli, right? Like, that's what they're in the bowls. They were just, like, drinking and getting drunk with their boys, and then the soju came a little bit later when you were able to distill it, and the technology got better. So, like, that's where you got the soju from. I've never had Jinseng soju before. Whoa. I had some, like, rich people, like, some Chebur Korean soju. So are they trying to make soju healthy right now? I feel like, yeah, it's kind of like that. I don't know if you can fully, but I think this might be the balance. At least got some nutrients. And then you also got the makgeolli, right? You got the makgeolli, like, the Korean-American version of makgeolli. Like, that's part of it's really cool. Shout out, Carol. And what I love is, like, you know, the drinks are so cheap here. If you were to get this at the karaoke bar, you know, shout out to them, but they're going to mark it up, you know, so you get your drinks in pre-game here. So, man, that's exciting. That's why I love starting here at WorryJip. We start the video here, and you start your night here. Oh, my goodness, guys. This is actually my very first time being at WorryJip for the lunch crowd. What are we looking at, Sam? That, to me, looks like the... That's kale, but, like, usually there's also perilla leaf version. Oh. Okay. What else is very special that people should know? Obviously, they know the basics, but, like, unless you're Korean, like, this is, like, if you know-you-know type thing. Jajangmyeon, right? Okay. So, this is, like, Korean-Chinese, right? Right. So, this is, like, every Korean kid's, like, favorite childhood dish. Mmm. It's so good. And, like... Man, I'm actually really excited about this because I love jajangmyeon. I just love that dish in general. Yeah. With the jajangmyeon, like, when you're having with the radish kimchi, like, that's fire, right? Oh, okay, okay, okay. You tell me what to do. You tell me how to eat it. You mix and match. Because I've had jajangmyeon before. I didn't eat it with the radish before. Yo, I'm telling you, these jajangmyeon, this was good. Yo, shout out to Wornin' Jip. This is all super affordable, guys. Price is very per item, but I'm telling you, this is absolutely a cheap eat for the tier and the quality and the diversity of food you're getting. All right, so we're here with Adam and Sam. Tell us why you guys started the sneaker company. We think Asian-American culture is amazing, and we want to celebrate it. All right. And you're celebrating it through sneakers. Yeah, we are. Let's take a look at them. Don't, hey, man. 1587, right here. Ooh. So 1587 was what is now known as the United States, like the very first Asian-immigrated and step-put in this country. Oh, nice, man. That's pretty cool. So it's built into the name. Yeah. I mean, why, as like Asian-Americans, you're Korean, you're Chinese, like why did you guys want to start a sneaker brand? For me, sneakers, I've loved them my entire life. I think as an Asian-American, like, the sneaker community is so inclusive. It lets you be your authentic self. I think for Asian-Americans, that's so free and amazing. So long people have told us, your culture is not cool. You need to assimilate. Sneaker culture, you can be yourself. That's why we want to really celebrate that. And the other thing, too, for me was being confident is, like, you don't have to explain yourself to anybody. You can just be who you are. And so with 1587, you get to walk around and be unapologetically Asian-American without saying a damn word. Mmm. I like it. So I guess, I mean, what are the Asian elements to this shoe? Because obviously it's a clean-ass shoe, just at the base level. But I guess, like, what makes it you guys, what makes it 1587? So if we hired Asian-American designers, our favorite festival growing up was the Moon Festival. Mmm-hmm. So we took traditional depictions of the moon and then put that design DNA in the shoe. So this is our first model, the AP87. It's a minimalist tennis silhouette. So this shoe is amazing because it works with every outfit and will elevate your outfit. Oh, definitely. I can see people wearing it with a suit look, or you can wear it with the Capris or almost like the joggers. This is the most versatile one. And you know what it is? I can already feel the leather as quality, man. Yeah. These shoes were made in Italy. They use the finest Italian leathers. And for the bottom, it uses all natural rubber. So these shoes will look amazing on the first wear or the 10,000th wear. Right, right, right. Because as they age, it'll take its own character, right? When you have quality leather, it wears in way different. We also have the Morro Bay. That's Morro Bay, 80s-inspired basketball chunky shoe. Okay. Don't, don't. You guys, are these my size? No. Size 10. I think it's important for us to get back to the community and make sure that people know that like, hey, we're not just here to profiteer off this, right? Using the Asian American community and our identity as a way to enrich ourselves, but also we have to be giving back. The other part of it also is like, we're showing you that it's a different pathway. We're breaking the model minority myth here. Like, look, we don't need to be doing the same thing that's linear of being a doctor, lawyer, engineer. We can own a dope ass sneaker brand and not apologize for it and know for a fact with the confidence that we're going to be successful. And our big thing is we want to show everyone, for everyone who says Asian American culture isn't cool that we're followers, we think that's bullshit. We can't wait to launch our shoes and show everyone how amazing our culture is and how powerful our community is. No, that's dope, man. Where can they get the shoes at? 1587 Sneakers.com. 1587 Sneakers.com, man. Aren't you guys continuing on with Koreatown Cheap Eats? We're headed just right across the street to Food Gallery 32. It just goes to show you how dense it is. We're doing a food crawl and I'm walking 10 steps to the next spot. Aren't you guys, we just finished getting our items at Food Gallery 32. Sam, what are you working with right here? I got some kimchi bacon. Yeah, kimchi bacon. I got a sweet potato bun. I got dessert. Yeah, let's do it, man. Dude, I had no idea. It's actually pandemonium in there. That's really good. I got kimchi bacon piled. I feel like this is a very Korean flavor. Yeah. Sweet potato on the inside. I like it a lot. Delicious. All right, you guys, continuing with our Cheap Koreatown Eats food crawl, we have landed at the iconic Grace Street desserts, man. I know that this spot is really interesting because on a Friday or Saturday, you've kind of got your church crowd, but you've also got drunk people here eating pastries, too. Yeah. You got both. So shout out to Grace Street, man. Multiple demographics. They're balancing here. And you know what? This sort of brings us to our final point that we got here. It's like, you know, Asian movements, Pan Asian movements. They got every drink here. We've got Vietnamese cafe sudo. Obviously, we've got the Korean dalgona coffee. We've got matcha from Japan. We've got a Thai iced tea. And of course, we've got this Korean interpretation of Basque cheesecake, which if you guys know about Basque, that's like a region of Spain. So, you know, really, really dope shit going on right here. What are you going for, man? Should we give you the dalgona? Yeah, I want the dalgona. For sure. How do we say it in Korean? Dalgona. Dalgona. What are you going for? We've got matcha, Thai beef. I didn't even know Basque existed until 10 seconds ago. I want the cheesecake. All right, you got the cheesecake. You know, I need a little pick-me-up. I'm going to go with the cafe sudo, the via one. All right, everybody, real quick, I'm crashing the party. I was waiting for my pelican of chicken sandwich deluxe, only $10 from Food Gallery 32. And I got this special torched marshmallow churro for five bucks. So, amen. Cheap each. Street churro is actually a chain from Seoul, I believe, that as I enter the U.S. market. Freshly fried, made-to-order pelican of chicken sandwich, $10, made-to-order, super fresh. Whoa! Street churro, s'mores, marshmallow torched on top, $5.50 over at Food Gallery 32. All right, Adam, you have been many years in the sneaker industry. You got some really cool stories and you got a really interesting perspective. Why don't you share that with us, man? Asian-Americans have been a huge part of the sneaker industry for the last 20 years, but we don't get any credit. So we're here to change on that. Why do you think that is? Obviously, even at a factory level, back in the 80s, Asians were there, right? The industry, probably on a design aspect, you guys see the movies and stuff. It wasn't that Asian until probably the 90s, right? Yeah. But it's been very Asian since the 90s, even on the back end, not just production, but even on the design side. Yeah. Why do you think that Asians haven't fully got their due credit in that field? Asian-American culture, the sneaker industry loves it, but they're so afraid of that word Asian-Americans. They're stuck 20 years ago where they think Asian-Americans aren't cool, they're nerves. They don't embrace the culture. So no more hiding behind the word street culture or rebranding it. Let's be loud and proud. A lot of things that are really popular in street culture, why do we have to hide behind another monitor? Yeah. Let's call it what it is. No, for sure, for sure. I feel that. All right, you guys. We're going to be continuing our cheap Korea town food crawl through Korea Town NYC, but that's a wrap for Sam and Adam. And thank you so much for showing up for coming through. Thank you guys for coming through. It was awesome. Thank you, guys. And telling the story and making sneakers meaningful and high quality. Sometimes when you wear the Gucci shoes with the bumblebee on it, you just kind of have a feeling like that's not you, but you can get the quality here, you know, a fraction of the price to support the Asian-American community. Let's go onwards. All right, everybody, continuing our cheap eats crawl through K-Town and the best deals in K-Town. Guys, I got comedian friend Christine who's going to help us out for the rest of the video. Hi, I'm Christine Kim. I'm a comedian living in New York. I produce shows called Very Big, Very Asian Comedy. We also have a festival coming up in, like, very soon, at the end of April. But you also know how to eat in K-Town very cheap. You got some K-Town hacks. I do. I do have some hacks, and we're going to share them today. We're going to hit up BBQ Chicken. They got some really good deals here. Let's go. All right, so if you're looking for a quick grab-and-go, BBQ Chicken is actually a really good place. They have the chicken out like this and they actually have a lot of, like, non-Korean flavors like this Jamaican rice bowl. They have the Cajun Chicken Rice Bowl. I'm looking at getting the Mala Triangle Kimbap and the Cajun Triangle Kimbap. What place does this have in K-Town? I mean, this is the go-to place. People have to go here or Palakana. I'm sure those are the two Korean brands on this street. This is obviously ready to go. You don't need to wait. All right, so for $2.99, you can get the Triangle Kimbaps, AKA the Onigiris. Guys, BBQ Chicken got deals in there. Mala Triangle Kimbap. A little bit. A little bit of Mala. It's not too strong. A little drip of hot pot in my mouth. Perfect. Okay. So this is the Cajun one. A little bit of spice. Definitely flavor. Do you want to switch? Let's move on. Okay. All right, Christine, what's our next spot? All right. So we're in a food hall called Afternoon. It has mochi mochi donut. It has tuna, salad, pasta. I think they have bubble tea. Machi machi. Machi machi. So there's Machi Machi and mochi mochi. Yes. And those are completely separate. Completely separate. You can get donuts and then you can get a drink. And then you can get a little afternoon delight over here. I think it's clearly a cheapy because there's a lot of young people here. You know, maybe they're getting off from school or even from work and they want to snack. The hot dog is huge. I mean, honestly, I don't eat the Korean hot dog a lot, but for like $7, you can get a fully loaded with crispy potatoes, mozzarella, a hot dog inside. How do you feel about it as a Korean person? What do you think about the K-hot dog? I mean, I think it's delicious. It's portable. It's definitely a guilty food because it's fried. It has cheese and it has hot dog and stuff like that. If you go to a K-town, like there is obviously some very expensive food that you can get. There's also a lot of cheap food and you still get the K-vibe. It's all K-popped out. All right, Christine, as a Korean and also a K-town veteran, what is your hack here at BCD? Okay. So my hack here is like coming up for date night and we ordered one of these entree combos Monday through Friday. You can come during lunch or dinner. There's like a dollar difference, but you can order this one order and eat it between two people. But is it true that like frown upon you for doing that or you think it's okay now? It's okay now. Okay. I haven't had a problem like done it a few times. They're okay. And the hack is obviously ordering an extra punch after you finish it. So finish the first round and ask for another one. Next, you want to go to probably three rounds of punch-on. Yeah. For one order, you know what I mean. You want to be... So if you're sharing one combo, you think it's okay to order up to three new fills of punch-on. Okay. All right guys, that's Christine saying it. Christine Kim, it's not a joke. It's not a joke. BCD, still a good deal. Yeah. Come eat. All right, Christine. Our next cheap-eat spot is Gammyok. Now, it's not really a cheap-eat spot but why are we here? Why are we going to Gammyok? All right. So we're going to Gammyok because it's... Gammyok? It's another day and night spot. Over here, I usually order the Toganyitang which is like joints. It's hard to make at home. That's usually what I eat out. Things I don't cook at home. And then what's the hack though? Okay. And so you want to eat it... You said the best. Okay. I don't know. It used to be better. You just said the best. It used to be better when a specific grandma used to be around. I don't know if she's alive anymore. This is some deep-cut K-town like knowledge. See? This is the stuff that I might know about Chinatown. I don't know this about K-town. The kimchi is really good but they also can sell it to you by itself, right? Oh, I would have to double-check that. Okay. But you're just saying eat as much kimchi like the extra kimchi juice on the side to dip the meat in. Yeah. Are these like broke Korean date packs? Yeah. I mean, we are very resourceful and we don't like to spend a lot of money on dates. All right. I got to try this kimchi then. Let's go. 1999 and this is what you get. Yeah. So these are the the joints. There's noodles in here. Oh, the fungus. F-U-N-G. Oh, you see? Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, you know. I remember, yeah. Have I been here? Or I met you? I was in the also in the YouTube. Oh, okay. All right. Thank you. So this is the Toganita. It's 1999. This is what you get. You get the joints. Yeah. All tendon, baby. Yes. All tendon. Good for the knees. You get noodles, which is so-myeon. Okay. So this is the kimchi that comes. It's a side dish, but they give it as an appetizer. It usually comes up first and then you're like, wow, like a kimchi. I will say the radish is better. That was pretty good. It's pretty good, right? Way better than anything I've had out of the can. Wow. All right. We asked for extra radish kimchi juice, right? Because what we do with it is as you can see, I've taken the noodles out of here, out of the soup. Okay. So you take this, you put it in here. Who taught you how to do this? Is this like an old man trick or like a- Yeah, so this is actually my partner, my husband. It's like this. This is a very like man-type of way to eat it. So you're getting the real stuff here, okay? But you eat it like this and it's kind of like, you know, you've had bibimguk-su before, right? It's kind of like that. So you put it in another dish. Yeah, it's like a cold noodle. Here, you can have. Wow. A completely different flavor. Pretty good, right? That's really good. I like it. All right, guys. 1999, split it between two people. You get some of the best kimchi in the game and then you get these joints. What do you guys call this one? This is like the sweet vinegar? Yeah. Gamyok, guys. Gamyok. Gamyok. All those colors each. What did you get? And you can get refills of this? Yeah, and you know, this is the thing that you're supposed to eat after going to like a Korean spa, right? To like nourish your body again. Oh, and also for the skin and the collagen. For the skin. Yeah, so if you don't have lotion, come eat the soup, okay? Gamyok. All right, our next location is H Mart. And obviously it's a grocery store. I love H Marts, but Christine, you have a very, very specific Boba H Mart hack that I'm interested to see. So let's go inside. So you're going after the Taiwanese grass-drelly drink, okay? Specifically the lychee flavor. All right, she's going to tell you why in a second. This is Christine's $3.50 Boba hack in K-Town. All right, so you got the Taiwanese grass-drelly drink. I actually have a Taiwanese Earl Grey milk drink, okay? Then we got a cup from Paris Baguette. But yes. We just, you just took this cup. Anyways. We just knew it was free. They didn't ask for anything. Go for it. Okay. So you were saying that you like to drink this grass-drelly drink by itself, and it gives you some Boba vibes. Yeah, so you need a straw. A straw for a straw. And this is specifically the lychee flavor. So it kind of might taste like a lychee grass-jelly Boba. Exactly. It kind of like mimics like bubbles, you know, like a tiny version of it. And it's technically healthier. I think grass jelly is healthier than Boba. I think it's healthier than the cassava root tapioca pearls, yeah. Exactly. Okay, but now we're going to make it real milk tea. Okay. So this was $2. All right. So we're going to have some of this. Tastes pretty good. It kind of tastes like the total cost. I'm convinced, Christine. Save money, guys. All right. Finishing up our cheap eats slash hacks of K-Town. Christine, we're out here on 35th. We're outside of one of your favorite restaurants. My favorite restaurants, yeah, they actually have this dish, which is Tuk-en-chang-du-gu, which is specific to here. A lot of people like to eat it here. It's kind of like what you eat with older Korean parents type of people. All right. So I mean, I've never had the pearl of the seats do. I don't know if you've been there. That's a karaoke place. They have a karaoke marathon on Sundays. So you can pack food, have a picnic there. It's the K-Town outside of K-Town. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye. The cheap eats in K-Town. Shout out to Christine for showing me a lot of your hacks. That was really informative. I hope it helps some people out there that are maybe thinking about moving to New York City or whatever. But anyways, guys, thank you so much for watching. And until next time, we out. Peace.