Somehow we only ate one barbecue meal in Seoul. But it was a good one. Woo Lae Oak has been around since 1946 and is one of the most celebrated restaurants in the city. It’s not the cheapest barbecue place—they use only Korean beef—but it’s also far from the most expensive. What they’re perhaps most famous for isn’t even grilled beef. The origins of the family that owns the restaurant are in North Korea and they are especially known for their Pyongyang-style naengmyeon and some people go there exclusively to eat their naengmyeon. We were there principally for the meat. Of course, it’s a mistake to end any Korean barbecue meal without chilled naengmyeon and so we ate across both sides of their menu, so to speak. Here’s a quick look at the meal. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Korean Cuisine
Mingles (Seoul, February 2024)
The vast majority of our meals out in Seoul—and all the meals I’ve so far reported on—were eaten at more or less casual restaurants and at markets. We did, however, also eat three fancier meals; at places with Michelin stars, no less. Our interest was to see what contemporary high-end Korean cooking looks like, especially in the home country, where diners are intimately familiar with the cuisine in its traditional guises. The first of these three meals was eaten at Mingles, located in Gangnam-gu and currently the holder of two Michelin stars. We ate lunch there on a weekday in late February. Here’s how it went. 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
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
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
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
Uchon (Seoul)
Back to Seoul, for the first of two reports this week. I arrived on a Tuesday evening and left the following Monday evening. My first and last meals (and a snack in between) were eaten at Bukchon Son Mandu in Insadong, not too far from my hotel (see my report here). My last dinner, on Sunday night, was to once again be at the place where I ate the majority of meals: Gwangjang Market. But I had a bunch of appointments on Sunday afternoon and needed to time lunch accordingly. Looking for places within 20 minutes walk of both my hotel and my first stop, I happened upon references to Uchon. The reviews I saw online referred to them as Uchon Dolsot Seolleongtang, and as it was a damp day, and as sullungtang is one of the world’s great antidotes against damp days, it was an easy call. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Gung, Gurgaon (Delhi, February 2023)
The Korean restaurant presence in the greater Delhi region has been building for a while. I’m sure the craze for Korean dramas and K-Pop has a lot to do with its growing popularity but it’s also true that there’s a decent Korean population in parts of the capital now, what with a number of large Korean corporations having big offices there. On past trips we’d been curious about trying some of these restaurants, but somehow never got around to it. This January we finally did. A good friend wanted to take us out to dinner and she suggested a Korean place she really likes, out of interest to see what the missus (who is Korean) would make of it. This was the Gurgaon branch of a restaurant named Gung: The Palace. They also have branches in Delhi, Noida and Neemrana. We were not expecting very much and our expectations were handily surpassed. Here are the details. Continue reading
Wonjo Agujjim (Seoul, March 2023)
Seoul, as you may have heard, is a great city to eat in and a very easy city to eat well in (assuming you like to eat Korean food). It is not always, however, a city in which it is easy to eat well alone (though, of course, I managed to do so at my lunch in Namdaemun Market’s Kalgusksu Alley). This because many of the things you may wish to eat—and when I was there last week, I wished to eat them all—are only prepared and served in portions that seem to assume that you will be eating out with at least one other person and probably more. And, indeed, in many of the restaurants and market counters where I ate, that did seem to be the dominant mode in which locals ate. At one dinner at Gwangjang Market, for example, I ate a bowl of dumpling soup that was perfectly sized for one. But throughout the meal I was tormented by the sight of massive links of soondae and many other dumplings and sliced meats—none of which I could have ordered because each order would have been a very large meal for one. And so I ate my dumpling soup, pondering the mechanics of setting up a service through which tourists visiting Seoul alone could form alliances for the purposes of eating out. No need to talk, just order food communally and eat it. A very gluttonous version of Tinder. If it already exists, please forward the details; if not, please forward me 75% of all profits once you set it up. Continue reading
Eating at H Mart (Garden Grove, CA, December 2023)
Here now is my last meal report from our trip to Southern California in December. It covers two meals eaten in the food court of the H Mart in Garden Grove: the first, family dinner on Christmas Sunday, and the second, a quick midweek lunch eaten by me and the boys. Fittingly, this report will post on the blog on the Sunday that will be my last full day in Seoul.
Why did we eat Christmas dinner at the H Mart food court? Partly because “why not?” and partly because we didn’t want to deal with the waits at regular Garden Grove Korean restaurants—as we’d have had to do before eating at Mo Ran Gak on Christmas in 2021 if there hadn’t been an outdoor tented area. (Now, of course, the tented seating is seemingly gone from everywhere.) The fact that there was a second meal a few days later should tell you we quite liked the food. Continue reading
Gwang Yang BBQ (Los Angeles, June 2022)
Alright: back to Los Angeles. On our trip in December we somehow managed to not eat in Koreatown, something that would have been unthinkable, and indeed downright impossible in the past when Koreatown was our home base. But in December we ate Korean food instead at the smaller Korean enclave of Garden Grove, south of Seal Beach. Those meals were good but we could resist the siren call of Koreatown only so long. The boys wanted to eat bbq and we wanted a location somewhat central’ish between us and friends in Pasadena and so it was to Koreatown we went, to Gwang Yang BBQ. Continue reading
My Annoying Opinions 