A discount store wouldn’t ordinarily be on a city’s list of essential things to do. However, Lotte Mart Seoul is anything but ordinary. Its unique mix of high-quality, affordably-priced goods run the gamut from clothing and household goods to cosmetics and toys. Its main draw for travelers, however, is its massive selection of unique Korean foods and snacks. Indeed, it’s easy to go wild at Lotte Mart.
For food lovers and souvenir hunters alike, exploring the snack aisles of Lotte Mart in Seoul is an adventure in itself. Packed with an incredible variety of Korean chips, candies, instant noodles, and specialty drinks, this store offers a glimpse into the country’s vibrant food culture. From sweet and savory flavor combinations to seasonal and limited-edition treats, there’s always something new and exciting to try. Whether you’re stocking up on K-drama-famous snacks or looking for unique gifts to bring home, Lotte Mart is a one-stop shop for delicious discoveries. With affordable prices and an ever-changing selection, it’s easy to fill your basket with tasty finds that capture the essence of Korean snacking.
What You Need to Know Before You Go to Lotte Mart
There are several Lotte Marts scattered around Seoul, but the chain’s mothership is the Lotte Mart located at Seoul Station. The sizeable space covers four stories, and the shopping action tends to take place on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors. Like any department store, Lotte Mart’s different floors are devoted to specific items and services.
- 2nd Floor: Groceries and photo processing. This is the floor where you’re likely to spend the bulk of your time exploring.
- 3rd Floor: Clothing, jewelry, sporting goods, and office supplies. There’s also a beauty salon and a tour agency located on the third floor.
- 4th Floor: Dry cleaning and seamstresses. Stop by for laundry services, quick clothing repairs or a custom-tailored outfit.
Lotte Mart is open from 10:00 AM to midnight. The store is closed on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of the month, so plan your visit accordingly. Because it’s a department store, it’s free to visit. Of course, you should be prepared to spend money. This is a discount market, though, so prices won’t crumple your wallet. That said, don’t be too shy about buying items here; Lotte Mart offers up to an 8% tax refund for travelers.
Lotte Mart’s Main Snack Foods
The reason why food is such a main draw at Lotte Mart is because the shop specializes in Korean goodies that are virtually impossible to purchase at a store if you don’t live near a large city. Even if you do live in big metropolitan area, some of the food items sold at Lotte Mart are extremely difficult to acquire in a market.
A lot of the unique edible items you’ll find at Lotte Mart are split into three major categories:
What to Buy in Seoul at Lotte Mart
The candy at Lotte Mart intrigues travelers because these sweets are rare finds. They’re also fun because they tend to either present familiar flavors in very unfamiliar ways, or they can consist of taste experiences that may stretch your concept of candy.
- Milk Candy: Part mint, part gum, this treat combines yogurt and mint flavors to produce a strange yet delicious taste sensation on your plate. It comes in numerous flavors, with milk mint being the most popular.
- Red Bean Cakes: These treats tend to strike an ideal balance between sweet and savory, not unlike a red bean dumpling you may get for dessert at a dumpling house. Some of the more popular brands have unorthodox looks or shapes, like goldfish. Don’t let their design intimidate you – they’re delicious. A few brands will also augment the red bean flavor with some chocolate to give it extra depth.
- Gourmet Pudding: This may not be candy in the traditional sense of the word, but it deserves your attention because it’s not your standard chocolate or vanilla puddings. Some brands will push the flavor envelope into fancy territory, such as caramel milk and egg or mascarpone cheese and cream. Others present flavors ideally targeted toward adventurous palates, such as cream and mustard.
- Chocolate Chews: These candies tend to be more on the bitter end of the spectrum, making them an essential buy for those who love dark chocolate bars. However, those that balk at bars with high cocoa percentages need not be intimidated: the distinct sweet note that you find in a milk chocolate bar is still present. It’s just little more nuanced, which makes them delightful.
- Chocolate Corns: You could say these treats look like chocolate-covered cheese puffs. You may also say they look like something your dog may produce. If you can move beyond its unusual look, you’ll be rewarded with a sweet, crunchy treat that tastes like a pre-sweetened chocolaty breakfast cereal.
- Custard Corn Cakes: These bite-sized treats have a spongy texture reminiscent of Twinkies in the United States. Since they’re corn-based, the cakes aren’t as sweet, but they hold a creamy custard filling that compensates for this. Think of these goodies as dessert cornbread.
Grab a Bag of Crazy-Flavored Chips (Crisps) at Lotte Mart
Lotte Mart’s selection of chips, or potato crisps, is a popular draw, and with good reason. They offer a wide range of flavors that range from familiar to boundary-pushing. The crunchy texture will be familiar, but the taste sensations are wildly unique.
- Honey Butter Chips: Seoul’s snack food scene thrives on trends, and these style of chips are about as trendy as they come these days. Not only should you buy a bag of honey butter chips if you find one, you should consider yourself lucky – locals have been known to snap up whole shipment boxes when they arrive. There’s a reason for all this madness, of course. As the name suggests, the chips marry the sweetness of honey with a distinct buttery flavor, and the result is rather terrific. Good luck.
- Crab Chips: Seafood snacks are a known commodity in Seoul, so seeing chips boasting seafood flavors like crab is expected. What may be unexpected is how good they are. Crab chips completely nail the slightly sweet, slightly salty flavors of the crustacean, and the chips’ tendency to absorb the seasonings intensifies these notes.
- Waffle Chips: As the honey butter chips craze demonstrates, the chips you can buy in Seoul aren’t exclusively savory. Waffle chips are another excellent example of this unique style. They tend to be on the thick side, and they usually feature a waffle-like pattern on their top. They also carry a buttery flavor. If you can’t get your hands-on honey butter chips – and that is a possibility – a bag of these will do in a pinch.
- Sweet Potato Chips: These chips aren’t dipped in chocolate or sprinkled in sugar. Rather, they’re made from sweet potatoes. Just like their sweet potato fry counterpart, the chips tend to walk the fine line that separates savory and sweet flavors. You’ll find these snacks in traditional chip form, but you may also find some that look like fries. Either way, they pack a type of crunch you wouldn’t expect from a fry, but you’d want in a chip.
- Cheese Chips: The best cheese chips you’ll find at Lotte Mart aren’t like your typical processed cheese snack chips that you’ll find in the average domestic market. Cheese chips in Seoul tend to emulate the flavors of cheeses you may find on a proper cheese and charcuterie board at a fine dining establishment. This makes them one of the more popular chip snacks around. It also makes them an essential treat to acquire if you’re a big cheese aficionado.
Think Outside the Box While Eating Crackers in Seoul
The diversity of the crackers you’ll find at Lotte Mart is nothing short of breathtaking. Most of the snacks that qualify as crackers deviate far off the path of what’s normally considered a cracker, which is a good thing. It makes them far more interesting to eat.
- Tteokbokki Crackers: If you’ve visited the street food scenes at Namdaemun Market or Dongdaemun Market, you may have come across tteokbokki, which are spicy rice cakes. These crackers deliver a more portable version of the street food delicacy. Most tteokbokki crackers aren’t quite as spicy as their street-bound counterparts, but this may be to your advantage if you have trouble handling the hot stuff.
- Chocolate Covered Crackers: These treats can be classified as either a cracker or a cookie, because they tend to be on the sweet side. However, they tend to be thin enough to justify the cracker comparison. The base is light and crispy, while the chocolate coating tends to be sweet and dense. The result is a balanced delight that’s rather addictive.
- Pepero Sticks: If you’ve ever seen Pocky at a grocery store, you already know what these sticks look like. For the uninitiated, pepero sticks are pencil-thin cracker shafts half-dipped in a sweet coating. The pepero sticks you can find at Lotte Mart are coated in a broad array of flavors that stem from fruit to cookies. Some pepero sticks are girthier than the typical stick, and others are embedded with other treats, such as Oreo-like sandwich cookies. Even if you’ve had Pocky in your life, picking up a box of pepero sticks is essential, if only because it’s so deeply ingrained into Korean culture. How ingrained? The sticks have their own national holiday, Pepero Day, which is celebrated on November 11.
- Korean Fried Chicken Crackers: Korean fried chicken is a worldwide phenomenon, and rightly so – it’s delicious. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that you’d be able to find crackers that emulate the flavors of an international obsession. The flavors are milder, but the crunch that you may experience when you chomp down on a leg or a thigh is present, thanks to the chips’ texture.
Other Foods to Buy at Lotte Mart Seoul
Lotte Mart‘s abundant snack food scene doesn’t stop at candy, chips, and crackers. There are plenty of other delights that are worthy of consideration – not to mention your taste buds.
- Seaweed: Lotte Mart has an entire selection of its snack inventory devoted to seaweed. There’s no shortage of style to enjoy the food, either. You can get in dried shreds, thin wraps, or even as crackers. You’ll even see some versions seasoned with different flavors, such as Korean barbecue.
- Banana Milk: This beverage is beloved by Seoulites, so its essential to acquire some to see why. Expect to taste exactly what you’d think it may taste like. It’s the creaminess of milk kissed with a touch of banana flavor. Most banana milk brands are packaged in single-use multi-packs, making them an ideal on-the-go beverage.
- Citron Tea: This style of tea is popular because of its versatility. It’s just as good when prepared as a hot or a cold beverage, which makes it an agreeable treat regardless of the time of day. Don’t be alarmed if you see bits of citrus fruit bobbing up and down in your glass – they’re supposed to be there.
- Dried Squid: This product is exactly what it sounds like – squid that’s been dried out. Think of it as calamari jerky.
- Instant Noodles: If you’re staying at a Seoul hotel with an in-room microwave, you’ll do well to pick up a pack of noodles. Lotte Mart has a massive, eclectic selection of noodles, including several extremely spicy varieties that will test your palate’s mettle.
- Wasabi Nuts: These spicy, crunchy delights are easy to carry and even easier to eat, thanks to their small size. You’ll find different varieties of nuts to consider, including almonds and cashews. The one thing that’s consistent is that the wasabi will deliver a nice dose of heat, just like wasabi should.
Eating While You Shop: The Lotte Mart Food Court
You’re probably going to work up an appetite as you stroll through Lotte Mart’s numerous aisles of snacks. Fortunately, the store has a food court on the 3rd floor to provide you a convenient option to sit down and grab a bite. Prices here are reasonable, and you’ll find a rather eclectic range of Asian selections to consider, including:
- Ramen
- Banchan
- Fried Chicken
- Dumplings
- Gimbap
How Do You Get to Lotte Mart?
Because Lotte Mart is located at Seoul Station getting there by subway is easy to accomplish. Take either the subway’s Line 1 or Line 4 to Seoul Station, aka Exit 1.
Attractions Near Lotte Mart
It’s easy to spend several hours exploring Lotte Mart and all of its wonderful and unique food items. However, the snacks you’ll acquire from your visit can be a great way to provide you with a little extra fuel to explore the abundance of cool, must-see attractions that Seoul has to offer.
Lotte Mart’s convenient location at Seoul Station puts you in the heart of the city. This puts you near some of Seoul’s most intriguing points of interest.
- N Seoul Tower– This near-800-foot tall television tower, planted in the heart of Namsan Park, is a popular cultural hub where travelers and Seoulites hang out. The main draw is its observation deck, which allows you to enjoy a breathtaking panoramic view of Seoul. The tower also has several dining options as well as separate museums devoted to teddy bears and Hello Kitty.
- Seoul City Hall – Erected in 1919, this Renaissance-style building and its sprawling plaza are home to several annual events and festivals throughout the year. Seoul City Hall is especially bustling with activity in the summer. Even when there isn’t any special activities afoot, it’s worth stopping by the plaza to visit its vertical garden and wall clock.
- Myeongdong – This perpetually bustling district is Seoul‘s chief economic and cultural hub. It’s one of the world’s most expensive shopping districts – high-end shops Lotte Department Store and Shinsegae Department Store serve as anchors – but you’ll also find several alleyway shops offering killer bargains. Be prepared to experience a crush of humanity here; an estimated 2 million people go through the district every day.
One More Thing to Know About Lotte Mart
A lot of travelers make Lotte Mart their last stop to buy souvenirs before traveling to the airport. The store is keenly aware of this and offers luggage and locker storage for customers on their way back home. You can also rent baby carriage strollers if you have little ones in tow.
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