The Seoul food content train rolls on, barreling from one food alley to another. On Thursday I posted a look at our lunch in Namdaemun Market‘s famous Hairtail Alley; today I have for you a look at another very well-established alley, albeit one not located in a market that is famous in its own right and not one that’s prominent on the tourist trail: Bossam Alley in Jongno-gu. Located not too far from a major street (Jong-ro) lined with massive office buildings, the alley nonetheless feels like it’s far away from the rush of Seoul. It takes up about 150 feet of Supyo-ro 20-gil and if you don’t know it’s there you could pass by none the wiser. You have to go a hundred feet or so into Supyo-ro 20-gil before it even begins. You’ll know you’re there when the alley suddenly narrows dramatically and there’s pig parts everywhere being cooked outside the restaurants that open from one side of the alley. We walked through the alley slowly and then picked a restaurant more or less at random: Obok. And I am happy to say that we had a very good meal there. Continue reading
Category Archives: Seoul
Eating in Namdaemun Market’s Hairtail Alley (Seoul, February ’24)
One of the mental scars from my trip to Seoul in March 2023 was not being able to eat at Namdaemun Market‘s Hairtail Alley—an enclosed section of the market that features many, many small restaurants that specialize in galchi jorim or hairtail/beltfish/cutlassfish stew and other related dishes. I hasten to add that it’s not that some external force prevented me from eating there; only the rare exercising of personal good judgment. At that point in that trip I had eaten several excessive meals by myself and was not up to the task of eating an order of galchi jorim by myself. And so I left it to the Feb/March trip when I would have lots of company. Well, I am happy to say that I did go back to Hairtail Alley with lots of company on this trip, and that I ate galchi jorim (and other related dishes) and it was good. Herewith the details. Continue reading
Kyochon (Seoul, March 2024)
We ate a decent amount of fried chicken in Seoul. This is, of course, the decent thing to do: fried chicken is an iconic Korean food. I’ve already reported on a more old-school-style fried chicken meal eaten at the Cheongnyangni traditional market. We also ate fried chicken in other market settings and also from the occasional street food stall on the go. This report, however, is on a meal at an outpost of a fried chicken chain, perhaps the most prominent one of them all: Kyochon. Established in 1991, Kyochon now has many, many franchise locations in South Korea and beyond, including a few in the US—though I believe the ones in the US are directly operated by the company. We ate at the location closest to us, not too far from the Bukchon Hanok Village. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Budae Jigae at Jeongni (DMZ, February 2024)
I know I promised the last of my formal Bombay restaurant reports today but it is has long been established that I am a liar. Also, do you really care? I’ll have that report on Thursday. Possibly. In the meantime, here is a report on a one-dish meal eaten on one of our program outings from Seoul in February. During our second week here we woke up bright and early one morning and headed off in a coach to the DMZ. Early rising and some snow-related delays aside, it was a fascinating day—though I never need to go into that cramped North Korean tunnel again. But this is not a travel blog and so I am not going to tell you about what you can see if you go on one of these DMZ trips from Seoul. All I am going to tell you about is the lunch we ate. Fittingly, it was centered on budae jjigae or “army/military” jigae. Continue reading
Bukchon Kalguksu (Seoul, February 2024)
After yesterday’s image-heavy (and then some) report from Bombay’s Sassoon Dock fish market, I have for you today a relatively restrained report from Seoul. This was one of our earliest meals in the city, eaten on the go just a couple of days after arrival. As with our first two meals (only one of which I’ve yet reported on), this was eaten in a restaurant on Insadong-gil, the main tourist drag of Insadong (the neighbourhood we’ve been living in). The main street is lined with souvenir shops and the like and is a magnet for tourist shopping. The alleys that branch off to the sides are filled with cafes and restaurants. I don’t know if anyone has tried to eat at them all, or if anyone has tried to provide a comprehensive guide to the restaurants on the street. But our experiences suggest that you can’t go very wrong just choosing a place at random. Though not all restaurants in Seoul are great, or even very good, I’m yet to eat at one that comes anywhere close to being mediocre, leave alone bad. Bukchon Kalguksu falls, I would say, in the “quite good” end of the spectrum. Continue reading
Imun Seolnongtang (Seoul, February 2024)
Imun Seolnongtang, located about a 5-7 minute walk from where we’re putting up, is avowedly one of the oldest, if not the oldest formal restaurant in Seoul. Some sites list the year of opening as 1904, others as 1907—either way, it’s more than a century old. And I believe it has been at the same location since the beginning, though the old premises have been replaced by a concrete building. Said building looks deceptively small as you approach but then when you go in you realize that the large white, windowless block that you’d taken to be a neighbouring storehouse is actually where the dining room of the restaurant is located. I apologize for rhetorically making you the one taken in by this when it was in fact me. It’s a very functional dining room, with lots of tables pretty close to each other. There are also a few group dining rooms along one side, one of which has traditional floor seating. No matter where people are seated, however, they’re likely to have a bowl of steaming soup in front of them. We certainly did at the quick lunch we ate there last week. Continue reading
Gwanghwamun Gukbap (Seoul, February 2024)
I’d said I’d have another Bombay report today but I lied. My remaining Bombay reports are very image-heavy and I don’t have the time right now to resize and process large numbers of images. And so I have for you another quick report from Seoul, of lunch at Gwanghwamun Gukbap. I noted in my report of lunch at Ryujung Dakgaejang that Seoul is filled with restaurants that specialize in specific dishes and have very little else on their menus. Well, Gwanghwamun Gukbap does have almost 10 items on their menu but odds are almost every table will have their eponymous gukbap on it. Gukbap literally means soup with rice. Here the soup is made with pork bones and meat and is served with slices of perfectly cooked pork. The rice is not served in the soup, as is traditional, but alongside for you to add as you see fit. I can report that the gukbap is indeed very good but we actually liked another dish even more. Read on for details. Continue reading
Eating and Shopping at Cheongnyangni Market (Seoul, February 2024)
There are very few things I like doing more while traveling than visiting food markets. I have a particular soft spot for fish markets but any large market will do. There’s no better way, I think, than this to get the feel of a place’s energy or to begin to understand its dynamics. What do people eat? Where do they buy it? How much does it cost? What is the culture of buying and selling? What do they not eat? These are important questions if you want to begin to understand a place, and you cannot answer them simply by eating in restaurants. And, of course, if you’re staying in a place for more than a few days and have access to a kitchen, then there’s no better way of feeding yourself. The bonus in Seoul is that pretty much every large market has a plethora of food options and usually at least one kind of food that they’re particularly known for. Such is the case with Cheongnyangni Market. It’s both a sprawling market where you can buy fruits, vegetables, grains, seafood and meat of a dizzying variety and it is home to a well-regarded food “alley”: Tongdak Alley. We visited the market with a group of students a couple of weeks ago, ate lunch there and did a bit of shopping as well. Continue reading
Ryujung Dakgaejang (Seoul, February 2024)
After a long, very image-heavy report on Thursday of two lunches in Bombay at a lauded restaurant (The Bombay Canteen), I have for you today a very quick look at a casual lunch in Seoul. Most of our meals out here have been—and will be—fairly casual affairs. It’s not that we haven’t done or won’t do any meals that involve reservations or which are the focal points of outings but for the most part we are eating quick meals in places we happen to be near for other reasons. Or in some cases, as with meals eaten at markets, our destinations have been consciously casual ones. Today’s meal was at a restaurant that was not a destination in any sense. In fact, we were looking for a different place. We’d just visited the Korean Film Archive and Google Maps had told me there was a sullungtang restaurant in the vicinity. The weather being wet and cold, sullungtang sounded like just the thing but when we followed the map’s directions we found no sign of that restaurant at the location. We did find Ryujung Dakgaejang right by where the other was supposed to be and rather than mess around in the biting rain, we went in. And a good thing too. Continue reading
Chon (Seoul, February 2024)
We’ve been in Seoul for 10 days now and it seems like high time that I post a restaurant report from here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not done with my Bombay reports. I still have quite a few to go, including of a couple of higher end meals than I’ve reported on so far. But from here on out I’m going to alternate reports from the two cities till all the Bombay reports are done. At that point I’ll still have a bunch of Seoul reports left as we’re here for another three weeks. To get things started I may as well give you a quick rundown of our first meal here, eaten just a few hours after we checked into our hotel, at Chon in Insadong. Continue reading
My Best Restaurant Meals of 2023
I was all over the map in 2023. Literally so. In January and early February, the whole family was in India, spending time in Delhi, Agra and Goa. In March, I went off to Seoul for a week. In late-April I was in New York and New Jersey for a few days. In the summer we all went off to Europe for an extended stint, spending three weeks on vacation in Italy and another six on work in Ireland. And then, finally, in October, the missus and I took a weekend trip to New York. That’s a lot of traveling and a lot of restaurant meals. And, of course, we ate out at our usual once-a-week clip while in the Twin Cities metro. So my selections for my best restaurant meals of 2023 draw from a wider geography than usual (the really unusual thing is that we did not get to Los Angeles at all this year). I’ve divided the list up first to separate more expensive/formal places from less expensive/more casual places but the top five list draws from both categories. A few more Twin Cities-centered lists follow after that. Continue reading
Eating at Gwangjang Market, Pt. 2 (Seoul, March 2023)
Here, only about four months after my return, is my last dining report from my trip to Seoul in March. It features the third and fourth of four dinners in a row eaten at Gwangjang Market, my absolute favourite place to visit on this trip. As you may recall from my first dining report from the market, at my first visit I ate dumpling soup; and on my second, I ate yukhoe tangtangi (seasoned raw beef with the chopped tentacles of a recently dispatched octopus). By the time of my third visit my overeating had been catching up with me. I’d eaten a deep-fried lunch at Namdaemun Market that day and so was in the mood for something light and fresh. Accordingly, I honed in on the stalls selling hwe or sliced raw fish and sat down at the first one that had empty seats. The following night I happened on the stall of an international celebrity but passed on the dish she is most famous for, in favour, once again, of something light and fresh. Details follow. Continue reading
Balwoo Gongyang (Seoul, March 2023)
Most of my meals in Seoul in March were eaten at either Namdaemun Market (here and here) or Gwangjang Market (here), with only a few eaten at sit-down restaurants. Of these restaurant meals the one that was least like the others was my lunch at Balwoo Gongyang in Insadong. This both because it was a relatively expensive meal (though not more expensive than my dinner at Wonjo Agujjim) in a more formal restaurant, and because it was an entirely vegetarian meal, and one also sans onion and garlic. This because Balwoo Gongyang specializes in Korean Buddhist temple cuisine. The provision of this meal is not in a spartan temple setting, however. As noted, it’s a formal restaurant with high prices; it has also received recognition from Michelin; and the meal takes the form of your choice of tasting menus. Continue reading
Eating at Gwangjang Market, Pt. 1 (Seoul, March 2023)
Back to my favourite place eat when I was in Seoul in March: Gwangjang Market. I have already posted a look at the market’s evening food scene, replete with a truly excessive gallery of images. That report did not, however, take in any of the four dinners I ate at Gwangjang Market on four successive evenings. Here now is the first of those reports, which covers the first and second dinner. The first dinner comprised two courses eaten across two establishments: first, dumpling soup eaten sitting down at an establishment on the main drag; and then, for dessert, as it were, fried chicken picked up from a vendor on one of the side alleys who did not offer seating. The next night I went back specifically for yukhoe, or seasoned beef tartare, and repaired to one of a few establishments that specialize in it: Changshin Yukhoe. (A video from this second dinner got some people very angry with me on Instagram—but more on that later.) Continue reading
At Gwangjang Market (Seoul, March 2023)
I said of Namdaemun Market that it was my second favourite place to visit during my week in Seoul in March. All my visits there were during the day: I went there for lunch three days in a row. My absolute favourite place to visit, I visited only at night: I ate dinner there four nights in a row. I am referring to Gwangjang Market. Another of Seoul’s oldest markets, Gwangjang Market has a bit of a split personality. During the day the action is mostly centered on shopping. As evening approaches, however, the stores shut down and the food vendors who fill the central alleys between the stores begin to take over. My understanding is that some of these vendors sell their wares during the late mornings and afternoons as well; but it is in the evening you must go to get the full food experience. Continue reading
At Namdaemun Market, Pt. 2: Eating (Seoul, March 2023)
Here is my third report from the place that was my second favourite to visit in Seoul on my trip in March: Namdaemun Market. I went there three days in a row and ate lunch there on all three days. My first report was of my lunch there on the second visit, eaten at their famous Kalguksu Alley. My second report was a broader look at the market, focussing on the dry and wet market sections and their other famous food alley: Hairtail Alley (I did not eat there on this trip). This report gives you a look at the other food vendors of the market—the ones who are set up, formally or informally on the market’s main drags. A few are restaurants; some have restaurant’ish spaces attached; some are counters—you eat standing there; some are street vendors—you take your food and eat it somewhere else. Continue reading
At Namdaemun Market, Part 1
Back to Seoul, back to Namdaemun Market. My first report from the market was of an excellent lunch in the market’s famous Kalguksu Alley. I ate there on the day of my second visit to the market. I visited the market on three consecutive days and ate lunch there on three consecutive days. Why didn’t I eat at Kalguksu Alley on the first day? Well, I couldn’t find it. On that first visit I was also unable to find the market’s other famous food “alley”: Hairtail Alley; the specialty here is galchi jorim or braised/stewed hairtail fish. The main reason I was unable to find these alleys is that I didn’t know what I was looking for. I’d not really done any research on the market and had lazily assumed that everything would be very visible. Well, the market itself is quite obviously visible but there’s no signage for the food alleys—you kind of have to know where you’re going and what you’re looking for. In my post on that Kalguksu Alley lunch, I told you how to find it; in this post I offer a broader look at the market and finally a look at Hairtail Alley, which I more or less accidentally found myself in while wandering around after lunch in Kalguksu Alley. Continue reading