Ask any Korean what their favorite street food is and, most likely, at the top of the list will be tteokbokki — the pillowy soft rice cakes doused in a sticky red pepper sauce. Now the dish is gaining traction in the U.S. thanks to a confluence of Korean popular culture and accessibility.
Pre-packaged versions of the food have started popping up at national wholesalers like Costco, online sales are spiking and tteokbokki-specific restaurants are expanding. There also was, of course, that moment BTS singer Jimin helped make it a trending item on social media when he was spotted eating it at a Seoul food market. Tteokbokki is also the preferred food of Ji-Young, Sesame Street’s’ first Asian muppet.
O’Foods, a global producer of Korean pantry staples, started selling instant pre-packaged tteokbokki in the U.S. in October 2021 through online retailers such as Walmart and Amazon. Its sales of the rice cake have increased 450% over the last year.
“Our bestselling product on online platforms has always been gochujang, but our tteokbokki product line has already become our runner-up within a year,” O’Foods company representative Justin Park told NBC News.
He added that tteokbokki has outpaced popular Western snacks at times, with his product and Quaker alternating for first and second bestsellers in the “rice cakes” category at Amazon’s Grocery and Gourmet Foods section.
Its sentimental value is not lost among second-generation Korean Americans, even as new clientele discover the comfort food.
“One of my earliest memories is when I was 9 or 10 years old, I was in Korea for the summer, and my cousins took me to a jip (store) right by their house and I just remember crying, so mae-yo (spicy),” said Joanne Lee Molinaro, creator behind the Instagram account The Korean Vegan and cookbook by the same name.
“I think that is a rite of passage that many Korean Americans have. As a result, its popularity kind of exploded. It’s certainly exploded in my…
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