The First Few Restaurant Experiences in Seoul

On our first trip to Korea, we were completely oblivious to what Korean food was.  The only thing we knew about Korean food prior to traveling there was kimchi, a fermented cabbage that is considered the national dish of Korea.  I would find out later on that the term kimchi actually refers to much more than just cabbage.

We only had 3 days in Seoul, so we stuck to many of the tourist areas and one of the most memorable food experiences for me was in Insadong.  Insadong is known as a very artsy area of Seoul and there were many restaurants tucked away down each alley and we just randomly selected one with pictures posted outside on sign boards.  Once inside, I don’t even know how we managed to order, because we didn’t know what any of the food was, but in the end it didn’t matter as we were left with a very satisfying meal.  We somehow ended up with a Korean seafood pancake, some dumplings with purple rice and an elaborate collection of side dishes. 

On another restaurant outing, we specifically found a dumpling restaurant to try a few different kinds of dumplings.  We grew up eating Chinese style dumplings and were expecting something similar, but we actually received something quite different.  Although it was still a mixture of fillings stuffed inside a doughy wrap, the seasoning and taste of the filling was very foreign and at that time, I didn’t quite enjoy the dumplings as much as I would have liked. 

One thing that I found to be very different from restaurants back home is that owners of these small mom and pop restaurants are often very involved.  We ended up ordering some bulgogi at a restaurant close to our hotel one night and the lady must have seen that we didn’t quite know what to do, so she came over and started cooking the meat for us and then serving it to each of us.  I would find out later on that this is actually quite common in Korea.  It definitely takes the service level to another level.

I really wish that I was able to try out many more restaurants during my time in Korea.  Now that I am much more familiar with Korean culture, I often read and hear about all these foods that I missed out on trying.