Chinatown Snack · Hollow Fried Bread
Gonggalbbang
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The name is basically an inside joke — legend says a customer once complained the bread was 'gonggal' (all empty air inside), and the bakery just adopted the complaint as its official name.
A ring of yeasted dough is deep-fried until it puffs into a crisp, golden, mostly hollow shell, then dusted with sugar and sometimes honey. Bokraechun, a Chinese bakery in Incheon Chinatown that traces its roots to 1951, is often credited with popularizing the snack and its name, and vendors along the neighborhood's main strip sell it fresh alongside other Chinese-Korean street snacks.
Why it's made this way: Incheon's Chinatown, Korea's oldest, grew from a Chinese merchant enclave established after Incheon's 1883 port opening, and this hollow fried bread — named, as the story goes, after a customer's complaint about its deceptively empty inside — remains one of the neighborhood's signature Chinese-style street treats.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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