When we’re in Seoul, as we were again for five weeks this spring, our main focus, food-wise, is on eating Korean food. On each of our trips, however, we’ve also eaten dim sum at least once. This because the branches of Tim Ho Wan in Seoul offer dim sum that is far superior to anything available in the Twin Cities—and to add insult to injury, they offer it at a lower price. And so we’ve eaten at Tim Ho Wan on each of our trips to Seoul as a family (see my reports here, here and here). On this trip, however, we ate another meal that was both Chinese and Korean. I’m not referring to Korean Chinese food as it is usually understood (see, for example, this meal from 2024). No, I am referring to the food of ethnic Koreans from northeastern China—from the part just north of North Korea. People from this community have settled in Seoul in recent decades, with a particularly large concentration in the neighbourhood of Daerim. We did a very informative walk through Daerim with the Royal Asiatic Society towards the end of our program learning more about the community. As part of the walk we went through a neighbourhood lined with northern Chinese street food vendor and also formal restaurants. A few days later we went back as a family to try one of those restaurants. We picked one at random, not really knowing what to expect. We ended up eating not just one of our favourite meals of any kind on this trip but one of our favourite meals of the year, whether in the US, South Korea, India or Japan. Here’s a quick look at it.

As you’ll see in the few street pictures in the slideshow below, unlike everywhere else in Seoul, in Daerim the Korean Hangul script shares real estate with Chinese letters. And you’ll hear a lot of Mandarin being spoken. This is a very different Seoul than the ethnically and culturally homogeneous one that is generally known and represented—you can read more about it here. I am hoping to spend more time in Daerim on our next visit, which will hopefully be in the spring of 2028—if it comes to pass, we will certainly also eat again in Daerim and probably more than once.

On this visit, as I said, we picked a restaurant at random as we walked down the street. That restaurant was Sigyeong Yashikang. There are large pictures of lamb skewers on the front to entice customers and they certainly did the job on us. We went in to find a large, bright restaurant with most tables occupied. We took a four-top booth along one of the walls and got down to business. The center of the table features an ingenious inset charcoal grill with a mechanized track over it on which you grill your skewers. I think it’s more or less assumed that anyone eating here will be getting skewers. There is a paper menu if you want one—and can read Chinese or Korean—but the ordering happens off a touch screen at the table. This has an English option. The translation is incomplete and somewhat variable but there are pictures and so if you’re reasonably adventurous you’re not really likely to go very wrong.

With a limited understanding of northeastern Chinese cuisine(s), we couldn’t really tell from the menu which dishes were northeastern. There were a lot of Sichuan dishes on the menu as well as dishes from other regions that are popular across the country. We ended up with a mixed selection. To start, we got a lot of northeastern-style skewers featuring lamb, chicken and pork and dumplings that I think were in a northeastern style as well. The dumplings were excellent (with doughier wheat wrappers than we’re used to) and the skewers were even better. They come seasoned and with extra seasoning on the side with salt and ground cumin and chillies. The younger boy wanted sweet and sour pork and so we got an order of that along with what turned out to be a Sichuan chicken dish of crisp-fried chicken with hot peppers. For veg, sauteed bok choy.

We also ordered some egg fried rice and in the process accidentally ate our favourite dish of the meal (and one of my favourite dishes of the year). This dish was not the egg fried rice. They accidentally brought us fried rice with crispy lamb instead. The person who brought it was somewhat confused and embarrassed and so we kept it. And, man, it was just goddamned outstanding! They then brought us an order of the egg fried rice as well—and later, despite our insisting that we’d loved the lamb fried rice and wanted to pay for it, they didn’t let us pay for the lamb fried rice. One more dish we hadn’t ordered rounded out the meal. This was not brought by mistake. If your order exceeds 50,000 won, as ours had, they give you a dish on the house. That dish turned out to be a cold platter filled with julienned cucumber and carrot, greens, rice noodles and what turned out to be thin strips of bean curd all topped with a tangy-hot dressing of chilli oil, vinegar etc.. We were instructed to mix it all together. We did and it was excellent as well.

For a look at the neighbourhood, the restaurant and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much the meal cost and to see what’s coming next.

Service was very friendly (also a bit outside the Seoul restaurant norm) and present whenever needed. The total cost, with steamed rice and soft drinks—was 97,000 won or $71 at the current exchange rate. Though keep in mind we were not charged for the lamb fried rice and that the last dish was on the house as well. It was crazy good value for crazy good food and if it hadn’t been so late in the trip we would have been back again. I did send a big group of our students there a few days later and most of them had it as one of their biggest food highlights of the trip so far. There’s a very good chance we’ll come back again in 2028 (if that trip happens) but there are also a lot of other places to try on that street—including the restaurant directly opposite it. We’ll see how it goes.

Alright, only four more reports to come from Seoul. Tomorrow, however, I will have a report from the place we went to right after our visit to Seoul came to an end: Hokkaido.