What to eat in Korea, from market stool to table grill.

The checklist

Eighteen dishes for a first trip.

• ☐ Bindaetteok — crisp mung bean pancakes, the star of Gwangjang Market.
• ☐ Mayak gimbap — finger-sized seaweed rolls with a mustard-soy dip.
• ☐ Yukhoe — seasoned raw beef, sweet soy and sesame oil, for the brave.
• ☐ Tteokbokki — chewy rice cakes in red chilli sauce, usually with fish cake.
• ☐ Eomuk — fish cake skewers simmered in broth; drink the broth from a paper cup.
• ☐ Hotteok — a griddled pancake filled with cinnamon brown sugar, best in winter.
• ☐ Bungeoppang — the fish-shaped bun with sweet red bean inside.
• ☐ Gyeran-ppang — warm egg bread with a whole egg baked in.
• ☐ Samgyeopsal — thick pork belly grilled at your table.
• ☐ Galbi — marinated short ribs, ideally over charcoal.
• ☐ Bulgogi — thin, sweet marinated beef.
• ☐ Korean fried chicken with a cold beer.
• ☐ Bibimbap in a sizzling stone bowl.
• ☐ Kimchi jjigae, the bubbling stew that comes with rice.
• ☐ Kimbap for a picnic by the Han River.
• ☐ Jajangmyeon — black bean noodles, Korean-Chinese comfort food.
• ☐ Dakgalbi — spicy stir-fried chicken cooked on a hot plate at the table.
• ☐ Japchae — glass noodles with vegetables, at a banchan table or a market.

The market

Gwangjang Market: where to start.

Gwangjang Market in Jongno was founded in 1905 by Korean merchants who pooled their money to compete with Japanese traders, and its food alley is still the most famous place to eat in Seoul. Three dishes made its name: bindaetteok, ground and fried while you watch; mayak gimbap, whose name jokes that you cannot stop eating them; and yukhoe, Korean beef tartare.

Stalls now borrow each other’s hits — a pancake stall may sell yukhoe, a yukhoe place may fry pancakes — and in 2026 one vendor even started topping yukhoe gimbap with caviar. Our advice: sit at the stall with the busiest griddle, share a pancake and a plate of mini gimbap, then walk the alley before ordering more. Check hours before you go.

On the street

How street stalls work.

Seoul’s tented street stalls are called pojangmacha — “covered wagons”. Some sell snacks by day; many pour soju at night with plates of tteokbokki, gimbap and fish cake. Their numbers have fallen over the years, but you will still find them around markets and busy streets like Myeongdong and Hongdae.

• Point and pay. Most stalls sell a few things on display. Point, hold up fingers for how many, and eat standing at the counter.
• Fish cake skewers are self-serve at some stalls: take a skewer from the pot and tell the owner how many you had.
• Winter is snack season. Hotteok and bungeoppang appear when it gets cold.
• Night markets like the Bamdokkaebi Night Market along the Han River gather food stalls on their market nights.

At the grill

Korean BBQ, the short version.

At a Korean BBQ restaurant the grill is built into the table, on gas or charcoal. Order the meat, and the table fills with banchan — small side dishes like kimchi, salad and rolled egg. Staff often help cook and cut the meat with scissors; if not, grill it yourself and do not flip it too often.

Eat it the Korean way: a lettuce or perilla leaf in your palm, a piece of meat, a dab of ssamjang (soybean and chilli paste), garlic or kimchi, folded into one bite. Pork belly (samgyeopsal) is the everyday choice; marinated short rib (galbi) is the treat. Our Korean BBQ guide has the full how-to.

Day trips

Worth leaving Seoul for.

Copy this

Your Korea food passport.

• ☐ A bindaetteok at Gwangjang — stall: ___ · crispiness out of 5: ___
• ☐ Mayak gimbap — how many I “accidentally” ate: ___
• ☐ Street-stall tteokbokki — spice level survived: ___
• ☐ A fish cake skewer and its broth — on a cold night with: ___
• ☐ Korean BBQ — pork belly or galbi? Who grilled? ___
• ☐ Fried chicken — sauce or plain: ___
• ☐ A banchan I did not expect to love: ___
• ☐ The dish I would fly back for: ___

Keep the trip

Keep every table, not just the photos.

A Korean BBQ table is a crowd of small dishes, which is exactly what PlateDiary’s cut-outs are built for: one photo and every banchan, every cut of meat and every drink becomes its own save. Add who you ate with as companions, and the market stalls and grill houses pin themselves on the map as you go — prices stay in won, never converted.

Back home, the place pages remember your usual at each spot, and a finished month with a few saves becomes a Served story: your dish of the month, your places and your company, flipped like a little book.