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$13 Korean Soup Vs. $88 Korean Soup

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Two hosts, three bowls of soup, and a $75 gap between the cheapest and the priciest spoonful.

BuzzFeed’s “Worth It” built its whole show on one dumb-simple question: does the expensive version of a dish actually taste that much better than the cheap one? On July 28, 2019, the series turned that question on Korean soup, sending hosts Andrew Ilnyckyj and Adam Bianchi out to eat their way through three tiers of broth, starting at $13 and climbing all the way to $88.

The episode, titled “$13 Korean Soup Vs. $88 Korean Soup,” runs 14 minutes and 25 seconds and follows the “Worth It” format to the letter — a budget bowl, a mid-range bowl, and a splurge bowl, all judged side by side for taste, ingredients, and whether the price tag actually buys you anything real. It’s the kind of format that’s made the show a fixture for anyone who ends up down a food content rabbit hole on a Sunday night.

• The episode compares three Korean soup dishes priced at $13, a mid-tier option, and $88, spanning everything from comforting staples like kimchi-jjigae and galbitang to premium preparations built around high-end meats and specialty seafood.
• Andrew Ilnyckyj and Adam Bianchi star in and produce the episode for BuzzFeedVideo, continuing the “Worth It” formula of ranking dishes purely on whether the higher price actually delivers.
• The episode’s comedic tagline, “Does that make you my soup daddy?”, became the line most associated with the video after it published on July 28, 2019.

The Spread From $13 to $88

What separates the entry bowl from the splurge bowl isn’t mystery — it’s ingredients and labor. The $13 tier leans on the everyday building blocks of Korean soup cooking: vegetables, tofu, and modest cuts of meat or seafood, the kind of pantry that makes kimchi-jjigae a weeknight dish in the first place. Climb to $88 and the ingredient list changes character entirely, pulling in high-grade beef and specialty seafood like the abalone and sea cucumber that show up in more ceremonial Korean cooking.

That jump isn’t only about what’s in the pot. The premium preparation demands more technique and more time from the kitchen, the kind of hands-on attention that turns a simple broth into something closer to a tasting menu. Andrew and Adam work through that gap bowl by bowl, weighing whether the extra $75 actually shows up on the spoon or just on the receipt.

Galbitang, Kimchi-Jjigae, and the Space Between Them

Korean soup culture covers enormous ground, and the episode uses that range on purpose. Kimchi-jjigae sits at the comfort-food end — spicy, fermented, built to be eaten often and cheaply. Galbitang, the clear short-rib broth traditionally served on birthdays and holidays, sits further up the scale, and the show’s $88 tier pushes past even that into genuinely luxury territory.

Does that make you my soup daddy?

That line, delivered mid-tasting, is the moment the episode gets quoted for — a reminder that “Worth It” has always sold itself as much on Andrew and Adam’s back-and-forth as on the food itself. The show’s whole appeal is that a real value argument comes wrapped in a bit.

Price Does Not Determine Value

The show’s recurring point holds here too: a bigger number on the menu doesn’t automatically mean a better bowl. A well-made $13 soup can outperform a fussier $88 version on straightforward flavor, especially when the cheap dish leans on the kind of technique you’d see broken down in something like the precise knife work that separates a good home cook from a great one. Simplicity, done right, still competes with luxury ingredients.

That’s the tension the hosts sit in for the full 14 minutes — not picking a winner by price, but by whether the jump from $13 to $88 actually buys a better bowl of soup or just a more expensive one.