Deep-fried, delicious and Insta-friendly, the ‘K-dog’ offers instant gratification like few other street foods. How can it fail in a world that has embraced K-pop, K-drama and K-beauty?
‘If you’d told me two years back, when I first started selling Korean hotdogs, that I’d be interviewed by the Guardian, I’d be like, ‘No way,’” exclaims Mari Riaz, founder and owner of Uh K-dogs ’n’ Juicy in Camden market, London. And yet here we are, in the calm before the lunchtime rush, discussing the street food trend she helped kickstart from her home kitchen in 2020, and which is now sweeping the UK.
At this point, I’ve yet to have one. I’ve seen them at street food markets and on social media, and I’ve even heard the shattering crunch of the crisp batter as devourers bite in – yet the texture and flavour of the Korean hotdog remains a mystery to me. I can imagine, though, or at least I think I can, from what I know of their contents: stringy mozzarella, a hotdog sausage of some variety, coated in a dough that may or may not be embellished with cereal or noodles, layered on to a stick, deep-fried and finished with stripes of ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard or sweet chilli sauce.
