[URBAN NOTE] The Humble Hodo Kwaja
Oct. 23rd, 2005 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldHodo kwaja almost justifies my move to Toronto. What is it? Go to a posting at the Tea Leaves weblog made last July for a quick definition.
More pictures are available of hodo kwaja here, at the Here in Korea weblog. Suffice it to say that although I prefer the red bean filling to the potato, I'll take either. Soon you'll be able to choose, too. Canada is home to the humble Timbit, after all. I give it a decade before the Hodo Kwaja--known, perhaps more humbly, as the walnut cake--is marketed across Canada.
I've only come across a couple of stores selling hodo kwaja, both in the Korean Business District on Bloor, east of the Christie TTC station. Uni Kim (680 Bloor Street West) is a good place, and the potato-filled hodo kwaja I bought from there last night ($C1.25 for a half-dozen, $C5 for 30) were excellent. I still find myself gravitating towards Hodo Kwaja (Walnut Cake) (656 Bloor Street West) (1, 2). One of these days, I will go to Hodo Kwaja to see the robotic hodo kwaja machinery set to work.
Hodo kwaja is a Korean filled sweet that is shaped like a walnut. In the mid-1930s, a Korean baker (one Mr. Cho Kwigum) was apparently contemplating a madeleine and said to himself "You know what would be great? It would be great if there was stuff inside of this thing." He gave it a distinctive walnut shaped mold, chose a popular filling, and named it, and Korea has loved them ever since.
More pictures are available of hodo kwaja here, at the Here in Korea weblog. Suffice it to say that although I prefer the red bean filling to the potato, I'll take either. Soon you'll be able to choose, too. Canada is home to the humble Timbit, after all. I give it a decade before the Hodo Kwaja--known, perhaps more humbly, as the walnut cake--is marketed across Canada.
I've only come across a couple of stores selling hodo kwaja, both in the Korean Business District on Bloor, east of the Christie TTC station. Uni Kim (680 Bloor Street West) is a good place, and the potato-filled hodo kwaja I bought from there last night ($C1.25 for a half-dozen, $C5 for 30) were excellent. I still find myself gravitating towards Hodo Kwaja (Walnut Cake) (656 Bloor Street West) (1, 2). One of these days, I will go to Hodo Kwaja to see the robotic hodo kwaja machinery set to work.
