What to eat in South Korea, and where

So this article is arranged the way the food is: by how a meal works, then by what to order, then by where, then by what we think is overrated. That last section is the one worth reading twice.

How a Korean meal works

Three things to understand before you order anything.

The table is the meal. You order one or two main dishes for the table and they arrive alongside banchan, the small side dishes, which come without charge and are refilled without charge. A $9 stew with six banchan and a bowl of rice is a full meal. This is why Korean eating is such good value and why the food budget in what ten days in South Korea costs is lower than people expect.

Restaurants specialise. The best places do one thing. A pork soup shop does pork soup. A cold noodle house does cold noodles. Ordering broadly at one restaurant is usually the wrong move, and a menu offering thirty dishes is telling you something.

Most dishes are cooked for two. Barbecue, stews, whole braised fish, chicken. Solo diners can eat extremely well in Korea but need to steer toward noodle shops, gimbap places, market stalls and department store food halls rather than the restaurants everyone photographs.

The dishes worth crossing a city for

Grilled meat, done properly

Samgyeopsal, thick pork belly grilled at the table, is the national default and it is very good. You cook it yourself, cut it with scissors, and wrap each piece in lettuce or perilla leaf with garlic, ssamjang and whatever banchan is in front of you. Roughly $40 to $70 for two with drinks.

Galbi, marinated beef short rib, is the special-occasion version and is worth having once. Hanu, Korean beef, costs what wagyu costs in Japan and for most people is a decision rather than a default.

The thing nobody tells you: the correct drink is soju cut into beer, and the correct time is late.

Soups and stews, which is where Korea actually lives

This is the category visitors under-order and Koreans eat daily.

• Kimchi jjigae, sour aged kimchi, pork and tofu. The house dish of the country.
• Sundubu jjigae, silken tofu stew, arrives bubbling, and you crack a raw egg into it.
• Doenjang jjigae, fermented soybean paste, savoury and deep and completely unlike miso soup.
• Samgyetang, a whole young chicken stuffed with rice, ginseng and jujube in a clear broth. Eaten in the hottest weeks of summer on the logic that heat fights heat.
• Dwaeji gukbap, Busan’s pork and rice soup, seasoned at the table with salted shrimp and chives. The single dish I would send someone to Busan for.
• Gamjatang, pork spine and potato stew, unglamorous, enormous, and one of the best things in the country.

Noodles

Naengmyeon, cold buckwheat noodles in an icy beef broth with mustard and vinegar added at the table, is a genuine surprise for most visitors and worth ordering even in cool weather. Kalguksu, hand-cut wheat noodles in an anchovy or chicken broth, is the comfort version. Japchae, sweet potato starch noodles with vegetables and sesame, is the one non-Koreans always like.

Rice dishes

Bibimbap is genuinely good in Jeonju, where it comes from, and merely fine elsewhere. Dolsot bibimbap in a hot stone bowl gives you the crisped rice at the bottom, which is the point. Gimbap, seaweed rice rolls, is the everyday food of the country, costs $2 to $4 and is the best cheap lunch in Asia.

The fermented layer

Kimchi is not one thing. There are hundreds of versions and the cabbage one you know is the tip of it: white kimchi with no chilli, radish cubes, cucumber, young stem kimchi in spring. If a restaurant makes its own, you will taste the difference immediately.

Jang, the fermented pastes, are the base of the whole cuisine. Anyone seriously interested in the food should spend an afternoon at a jang house, which is something we build into the food and culture route.

Temple cuisine

Entirely plant-based, no garlic or onion, cooked in monastery kitchens according to a tradition several centuries old, and among the very best food in Korea. A set lunch runs $25 to $45. It is also the answer for vegetarian travellers, who otherwise have a harder time here than the vegetable-heavy menus suggest, because anchovy stock, fish sauce and shrimp paste are foundational.

Where to eat

Markets, which are the best casual eating in the country

Gwangjang Market, Seoul. Mung bean pancakes fried in front of you, knife-cut noodles, raw beef tartare, and a level of noise that takes ten minutes to get used to. Go hungry, go with someone who can read the stall signs, and go before eight in the evening.

Jagalchi and Bupyeong, Busan. Jagalchi is the working fish market and you can have something bought downstairs cooked upstairs. Bupyeong night market is where to eat ssiat hotteok, a seed-filled fried pancake that is Busan’s best street food.

Jeonju Nambu night market. Jeonju has the strongest food reputation in Korea and deserves the night there.

The market day is the guided day we recommend keeping, always. Not because you cannot manage alone, but because the difference between eating four things you recognise and eating twelve things chosen by someone who knows the stalls is the difference between a nice afternoon and the meal you talk about afterwards.

Neighbourhoods

Euljiro and Jongno, Seoul. Old print-shop lanes full of grill houses and beer under strip lights. The Seoul that Seoul likes.

Seochon. West of Gyeongbokgung, small restaurants, quieter than Bukchon and better fed.

Mangwon and Yeonnam. Where young Seoul actually eats.

Gwangalli, Busan. Seafood and a bridge view, and better than Haeundae for eating.

The neighbourhood logic behind a Seoul trip is set out in Seoul in four days.

Convenience stores and department store food halls

Korean convenience stores are a genuine food category: cheap, good and open at four in the morning. The basement food halls in the big department stores are the fastest way to eat well when you are tired, and the prepared food counters are excellent.

What we think is overrated

Every food article should have this section and almost none do.

Korean fried chicken. It is good. It is not better than the equivalent in half a dozen countries, and it takes up an evening that could have gone on a stew you cannot get anywhere else. Have it as a late snack with beer, not as a dinner you planned.

Hongdae and Myeongdong street food. Both are now largely aimed at visitors. The corn dogs and the cheese-covered things are fun for twenty minutes and are not Korean food in any meaningful sense. Gwangjang and the Busan markets are what those places used to be.

Cafe culture as an activity. Korean cafes are beautiful and the coffee is serious and there are more of them than anywhere on earth. But a day spent visiting three photogenic cafes is a day not spent eating.

Live octopus. It is a genuine local dish and we will book it if you want it. Most people who order it are ordering a story rather than a meal, and it is not a good meal.

Anything sold as a Michelin recommendation in Seoul without a second thought. The guide is real and useful, and it has also turned a number of small neighbourhood restaurants into ninety-minute queues serving worse food than the shop two doors down. Ask a guide rather than a list.

Ordering, practically

• Point at the menu, hold up fingers for the number of portions. This works everywhere.
• Water, banchan refills and cutlery are self-service in most casual restaurants. The cutlery is usually in a drawer under the table.
• The bell on the table is for calling the server, and using it is normal rather than rude.
• Tipping is not practised and can cause confusion. Do not.
• Many good restaurants take no bookings at all and close between lunch and dinner. We put the opening hours in your document because the wasted-journey problem is real.
• Say what you cannot eat before you sit down rather than after. We brief restaurants in Korean in advance where it matters.

Plan this trip

Tell us how much of your Korea trip should be about food and we will build the route around the markets, the specialists and the one or two dinners worth booking months ahead. Free first proposal, no obligation.

Start planning →

Keep reading

• South Korea: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Food and culture in Korea, 12 days
• Seoul in four days, neighbourhood by neighbourhood
• South Korea for the first time
• What we would skip in South Korea
• All our South Korea trips

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