Eating my way through Seoul

[worldmatt]

Hey there,

At the end of November, I'm heading to Seoul to pretty much eat my way through the city, from street food to fancy restaurants. Any recommendations? And which neighborhood would you stay in if all you want to do is eat?

—worldmatt

[dizzhizz]

As much as I would like to help, try searching dude. I'm too fawking tired to recommend you some good dog soup (with bones).

[shoejuice]

I hear apple sake is all the rage now in apkudong. Ice berry, red mango are great for socializing. You'll see food about everywhere. But wha I like the best is just going to the little food stands and getting the chicken kebabs with pepper paste

[beast]

Korea? You mean the land of eating dog meat and live octopuses and other kinky stuff? You know what you are getting into?

[dizzhizz]

Just man up and eat whatever is handed to you. Koreans will compliment you if you can eat spicy shit and drink like a fish.

[DEPHT]

Man, it's been so long since i've been. Lets see....try visiting bonjuuk for really good porridge. Its a chain so you'll probably see it around....uh....Chosun Hotel has a really nice bakery (green tea cake ftw). There are so many different hole in wall places that are really good so def explore and try everything around. I remember they had this soup/stew called gamja tang (potato soup) that's made with vegetable and spare ribs stewed in...shit is amazing. A full meal will cost around 10 bucks a pop so def go around and experiment.

I haven't been in a while so unfortunately i can't give you specifics but i'm sure a member here can be of more help.

[dizzhizz]

A full meal will cost around 10 bucks a pop so def go around and experiment.

A full meal for one will only cost you about 5 bucks (6 given the recent currency appreciation).

[xcoldricex]

have fun. i spent a shit ton of money on food while i was in seoul for a month.

[DEPHT]

A full meal for one will only cost you about 5 bucks (6 given the recent currency appreciation).

damn, I knew it was either 5 or 10....but yea, a full meal is usually always 5000 won which is like 5-6 bucks as dizz said.

[dizzhizz]

Since people here rarely eat alone, the meal inclusive for two will run 10 at the lower end establishments. Still, a fucking bargain and no tipping whatsoever.

[dizzhizz]

Might as well for future references:

1. Sam Won Garden - Sinsa Dong - high end beef establishment which only serves domesticated cows. the beef is like butter and the prices are like caviar. Definitely foreign friendly and owner is Grace Park's (LPGA) family. You'll see pics of famous celebs and politicians so you know you aint getting just bones on the grill. Make mom pay.

2. Sam Kim - Various locations - nice and quality pork belly slabs at 8,000 KRW a serving (min. requirement is 2 servings). Their kimchee is quite good and must be grilled along with the meat. They have these really big omelettes with kimchee inside - weird but good at the same time. Their kimchee stew is quite up to par as well with either pork or mackeral.

3. Dool Dool Chicken - Fried Chicken & Beer - a must have. The chicken is tiny and comes complete with the bones and a silver bucket to spit out your bones. House draft beer should be about 3,000 KRW a pop. Man up and just get a 2,000cc pitcher instead. Dool Dool kills it. Fuck Kyochon.

4. Myung Dong Kal Kook Soo - Myung Dong - noodles in a beef broth. Get the mandoo/potstickers/gyoza if your feeling up to the challenge. Slurping is appreciated.

5. Myung Dong Ddong Katsu - Deep fried pork in a crispy batter. I think the Japs do it better and cleaner but its still quite recommendable if in the immediate area.

6. Non Gol Jib - Various locations - beef (kalbi sal) and some of their homemade ddaenjjang is good. Prices are decent too but pass on the cold buckwheat noodles.

7. Keun Jib - Sinsa Dong - bone marrow soup and ox tails soup. Just do it.

8. Nolboo Jib - Kangnam Bus Terminal - traditional Korean restaurant with a plethora of little dishes and entertainment from the waiters wearing traditional doo rags. You have to sit on the ground for this one so don't complain when your foot falls asleep.

9. Hyung Kyung - Korean Chinese - you want the black noodles (ja-jjang myun) with sweet and sour pork (tang-so-yook) and the Chinese liquor. Shit is super filling and cheap.

10. Po Chang Ma Cha - just walk up to any of these open food vendors selling fried squid, hot dogs or spicy rice cakes and you've completed your rites of passage.

[dismalfuture]

Koreans still eat like it's for subsistence over pleasure and there isn't much that is going to blow your socks off that can't be had just down the street in Seoul.

As a rule of thumb, stay away from ethnic restaurants. They are disappointing at best in Korea, you will not miss much if you spend your entire vacation eating Korean food in Korea. Not the best place to go if you want a big steak or a great pizza. Itaewon is an ok place to eat if you're living in Korea and can't stand anymore kimchi, but it's not the best choice for eating if you're just on vacation. You can go back home and have everything they have in Itaewon and have it be 100X better.

Korea went through a ban on U.S. beef imports for several years, just recently lifted, so most low-midrange Korean BBQ restaurants either took down completely or reduced and relegated their beef offerings to one or two cuts at most, on the corner of the menus, with a push for all the different pork cuts. The backstreets of Shinchon and Hongdae are good for looking for BBQ places. Figure on 15,000-20,000W a head at a low end place, up to a 100,000W or more at a really blown out posh place. High end places only replace questionable store interiors with cushy ones, and better cuts of meat, but come in at exponentially higher prices depending on how hyped the store name is. The Byeokje Galbi chain is an example of higher end hyped-up place that serves domestically grown beef (similar to Japanese Wagyu in appearance) that has servings of beef for like 50,000W per portion. A backstreet establishment in Shinchon serves up meat from 2,500W per up to 10,000W per portion (at most)....

Since Korean BBQ is typically grilled to a crisp and washed down with $3 a bottle soju, I don't really have too many criteria for a Korean BBQ spread besides it being clean and plentiful...

If you want to try trendy Korean food, think 'chicken'.... Many years ago (talking like 20-30 years here) a plain old rotisserie roasted chicken wowed Koreans. Then they started experimenting... breading and frying it... charcoal grilling it... adding Korean seasonings... breading and frying it in Korean seasonings.. went off course and started getting into Dak galbi/bokkeum bap places... then with the turn of the century and the 2002 World Cup they got all hyped up on Andong Jjimdak, which ran its course, lost popularity the last few years, got replaced by pork Haejangguk or Gamjatang in terms of popularity possibly, then a couple years ago the chicken came back full force and they started eating Bool dak... which is now waning in popularity... just waiting to be replaced by the newest way to eat chicken...

For regular run of the mill Korean food, it's really tough to list specific examples of the best restaurants for things like Kimchijjigae, Bibimbap, Jjajangmyun, Nengmyun, Samgyetang, Gomtang, Juk, Bossam, etc. Koreans have been fighting over this kinda shit for years. Rule of thumb is to look for the places that chock full of people at a regular lunch/dinner hour, Koreans stick together like sheep day and and night so this is pretty obvious. If a restaurant is dead and barren, it's likely the food is going to be shit. If a place is filled with high schoolers, it's likely the food is shit and dirt cheap.

My personal confession is that I am a clean freak and if I ever eat regular old Korean food, I usually just go up to a department store's top floor and spend a couple extra bucks to eat in a cleaner place where the food is pretty consistent(ly mediocre).

Tourist-y places like Insa-dong and Samchung-dong up by Kyongbukkung have some places worth trying out, and there are Hanjungshik places all over that serve up elaborate course meals. There's some chain of modern hanjungshik restaurants that was popular several years ago, there's a branch in the basement of the Korea Press Center(? is this right? Or Korea Finance Center) down from Kyobo bookstore in Kwanghwamun and then several other branches spread out around Seoul.

Dessert-wise, the Pinkberry/Red Mango thing has died considerably since the softserve frozen yogurt thing came out several years ago, along with Haagen Daz which was a bit too expensive for the average Korean.. Haagen Daz was serving up these elaborate sundaes for like $10 when the average Korean meal was like $5, and Koreans responded Korean style, by sharing amongst 3 people one sundae, which led to Haagen Daz's quick demise as a thriving chain... Koreans got into Gelato and Coldstone recently instead...

The Fruits Alcohol Shop place where they serve the cocktail fruit soju in the apple cups, that has died down too. That was the hot thing 5 years ago.... I think for drinking establishments, people have either gone back to basics and hit up the fusion bars that serve plain jane soju with fusion side dishes (that look and taste shit), and the 'ethnic bar' thing has swept Korea and come and gone in the past few years. Right now some people are hanging onto the last bastions of this Indian-rug/hookah thing but it will probably be dead by next year.

I think (Koreanized) Mexican food is on some upswing in Korea, it will probably be the hot food for the rest of this year, and may be dead as early as next.

If you wanted to eat fancy, you could hotel hop and eat lunches and dinners at 100 bucks a head, but they aren't really that great. They're more designed as 'festivals' to spotlight a new imported ingredient that the Korean market is getting for the first time, for example, cheeses or Wagyu beef, or Iberian ham.

The other end of the spectrum, street food... it looks and smells fucking magic, but I really want to see someone walk away after eating this and actually be happy to have eaten it. I was just as happy as anyone else to see the French fry-breaded corn dogs and the little mini pizzas for the first time, but did not become the believer. Right now the craze is for waffles with whipped cream in the middle, eaten as a sandwich...

Anyhow, this is Seoul food, in a nutshell.

[dismalfuture]

dizz's recommendations are on point, as expected.

As a warning, what you don't want to do is go to a tourist trap Korean BBQ place, these are often around Seoul Station/Itaewon/wherever they take Japanese tourists on package tours, they will charge you something ridiculous. 2 little Japanese girls I knew were taken to one and expected to pay 60,000W for their meal. They took a picture of it and showed me, and it looked like a 15,000W meal.

The Donkatsu rec is probably the one I am most picky about as I love donkatsu, but only when done Japanese style, there exists a 'Korean style' donkatsu that looks downright fecal and is typically the filet butterflied and pounded paper thin, battered/fried, cut into a thousand million pieces, drowned in crappy insto-demiglace, and served with this inevitable side trio of cabbage drenched in mayo/ketchup, raw canned corn, and a little foil cup of fruit cocktail or something, just don't do it. This is usually offered up at odd places like cafes or something, so you won't have to worry about running into this, probably..

There's a chain called 'Saboten' in various locations around Seoul (right behind City Hall, Myongdong near the subway station, Hongdae) that is passable. There are a number of other Donkatsu places that have okay Japanese-style donkatsu as it is for Seoul, but don't expect any Maisen or anything in Korea.

Some alternatives to dizz's solid recs if you find yourself elsewhere in Seoul:

Myongdong Kalguksoo/Gyoza is fucking famous and typically a shitshow at any hour normal people want to eat at, it's where people go to eat if in Myongdong. Solid eats if you can brave the line. If you find yourself near Shinchon I recommend you walk out and the back gate of Ewha Womans University, look directly across the street and look for 'Cafe LaLee' and go to the 3rd floor of that building. There is a Bossam/Kalguksoo place that is fucking phenomenal. The only things on the menu are Bossam, Kalguksoo/Dduk Mandoo gook, mandoo, and haemool pajeon, and it's always busy. The soup broth is complex, with a slightly clean spicy bite from fresh green chili peppers to it that I find uncommon. 4500W a bowl, thereabouts.

As I recommended, in Samchungdong, if you go up the main Samchungdong street and go past the left turn that takes you into the east gate of Cheongwadae, and keep going straight a little further past the intersection, oh I'd say about 100 yards or less, look up to your left and look for a green and white sign on the 2F of some building that says "Deul hyang gi"... it has Korean-style screens in the window and has a traditional interior scheme, very small restuarant. This place serves a vegetarian Korean course meal that is excellent. It starts out with a jook of some sort, then a green salad with a sesame dressing, then I think some nabak kimchi, some jeon and breaded fried things like a couple pieces of battered whitefish and breaded/fried mushroom-stuffed tofu blocks, some pickled sides, a couple kinds of kimchi, jap chae, mushroom tangsooyuk, a small sanchae bibimbap that you finish yourself with a nice sesame oil/gochujang dollop to your liking (I tend to like things like shiraegi and cham namool in my bibimbap so I think this one is fucking fantastic) served with a shiraegi doenjangguk on the side, and then a dessert of fruit and soojunggwa or shikhye. Price is a fucking steal at 15,000W a head, they have a couple notches up on the menu too but the 15,000W is very very generous, at least 7 or 8 courses. I don't really like Korean food all that much but could eat here all day everyday, the food is fresh and well done.

There are a few imitators serving similar stuff in the neighborhood (with meat) but the quality isn't as great.

For just looking at food, the basement of Lotte Department Store in Myongdong has a whole floor laid out of kiosks on the far end, cooking up takeaway everything for cheap. A lot of it is set up for Japanese tourists and lots of imitation Japanese food is served up, but there is probably something edible amongst a lot of less than edible stuff. This is more of the place where tired shoppers sit down, you'll never find a seat as lots of squatters come and take 4 chairs for the 1 person in their family who is eating.

If you fancy a well-rounded Korean food experience, you gotta try the Bulgogi burger at McDonald's and the Shrimp burger at Lotteria. They're uh... well try one. You can probably wash these down with a green tea shake or something of the sort.

There's a restaurant called 'Tani' that is both in Cheongdam or in the Avenuel building in the Myongdong Lotte Department Store. It is kind of blown out and tries to be 'foody' and is Korean fancy as in they're kinda chasing whatever was trendy foodwise over here in the US several years ago, it's like a wannabe Nobu, I suppose you could give it a try to see how Korean modern fine dining is. Think sashimi and foie gras, stuff like that. It's probably a relative bargain considering the market, but exponentially more expensive than your typical Korean dining experience.

There is no one single great place to get everything at its best, so lodging is up to you. I'd stay in central Seoul, with proximity to one of the nightlife areas as everything turns into drinkers past sunset. Moving around is easy by taxi or subway if you need to. I'd personally book out a suite at a nice love hotel,

http://www.hotel365.co.kr/Lodg/BestHotel/

Expect to pay 100,000W(regular)-150,000W(suite) if you're gonna stay multiple days and leave your stuff there.

I lived at this one, ranked #5, for about a month in September, it's just down the street from all the Hongdae clubs and liked it the best of any hotel I've stayed at in Korea:

http://www.hotel365.co.kr/Lodg/OnePage.asp?ACode=A2000058

It's like 120,000 a night, there's a deluxe room with a pretty nice bathroom setup for only 10,000W more which I recommend. All of the rooms are pretty similar; all have at least a 42" plasma, a PC w/ internet that is hooked to the plasma, a bidet toilet, a set of table and chairs or a couch and a coffee table, coffee setup and mini fridge with some beverages, all the toiletries provided, etc. It opened earlier this year so it's clean as far as these places go, soundproof and anonymous as well.

[xcoldricex]

I was just as happy as anyone else to see the French fry-breaded corn dogs

haha those were funny as hell. i never ate one though.

[dizzhizz]

Good call and follow up Dismal! When you coming back?

[dismalfuture]

hopefully not soon! haha, I wish...

I'll be back in the new year...