AWESOMOISO
You are coming to Korea and want to know what to eat before you get here. What each dish tastes like, what changes from shop to shop, what it costs, and which city is worth the trip for it.
Gimbap is four fixed elements — seaweed, seasoned rice, pickled radish, egg — and everything else is a dial the shop turns. What the varieties actually change, why some shops use sesame oil and others vinegar, and how to order it if you cannot eat meat, fish or sesame.
Korea’s winter yellowtail obsession is newer than it looks – and it started with a Russian ban on Norwegian salmon. What bangeo tastes like, what dae-bangeo really means, and how to tell it from busiri.
Agu-jjim, daegu-ppol-jjim, haemul-jjim and kkotge-jjim – Korea’s spiciest seafood dishes explained, why jjim does not mean steamed, and the one dish that means two different things.
Kalguksu, janchi guksu, sujebi, wandang, jjamppong, bibim-guksu, jjolmyeon, bibim dangmyeon and japchae – what each tastes like, which are spicy, and why they are the easiest meals to eat alone in Korea.
Busan is a port city, so seafood is lunch rather than an occasion. Eomuk, pajeon, grilled shellfish, the underrated seafood soups, hoe and ganjang gejang – plus an honest word about raw oysters.
English searches find only tourist spots. The method locals use is a three-part Korean search string pasted into Naver – and the blog posts it returns already contain the address, the hours and the honest opinion.
Broth or sauce, buckwheat or wheat, Pyongyang or Hamhung. How milmyeon differs from naengmyeon, how to choose between mul and bibim, and an honest account of the dish Koreans argue hardest about.
A Korean beef menu is a list of cuts, not dishes. What hanu means, how the 1++ grade works and what changed in 2019, how each cut actually tastes, and why yukhoe uses the lean ones.
Milmyeon, mul-naengmyeon, bibim-naengmyeon, makguksu and kongguksu – what Korean cold noodles are actually for, why the broth tastes of nothing at first, and the 150-year-old bowl that happens to be vegan.
A pork cutlet lunch in a sign-covered Busan building — why the soup comes first, what the two kinds of donkkaseu are, and how a Western cutlet became Korean soul food.