Where to Eat in Seoul

First, how Seoul eats

A Korean meal is shared. The main dish comes to the middle of the table with a spread of small side dishes, banchan, around it: kimchi, seasoned greens, pickles, perhaps a small omelette. The banchan are part of the meal rather than extras, and in most everyday restaurants they are refilled if you ask. At a barbecue the meat is cooked on a grill in the table, often by the staff, and wrapped in lettuce with garlic, chilli and a thick soybean sauce.

Many Seoul restaurants cook one thing. A soup house may serve ox-bone soup and nothing else; a noodle shop two or three dishes; a chicken hotpot place one pot in two sizes. The menu is often a short list on the wall. That is why this guide sorts the city by the kind of place first: once you know which door to go through, the ordering is simple.

The old markets are eating halls as much as shops. In Gwangjang, the food alley stays open from nine in the morning until eleven at night every day, even on Sundays when the rest of the market closes, though stalls may shut over the Seollal and Chuseok holidays. On weeknights you will also see hoesik, the after-work group dinner, filling barbecue houses with office tables that order round after round. The drinking side of that evening belongs to our Seoul nightlife guide; this page stays with the food.

Some of what visitors meet is not what residents eat. Myeongdong's evening stalls cook mostly for visitors. The office streets of Jung-gu and Jongno at lunchtime, the soup houses at breakfast and the neighbourhood markets are where the city feeds itself.

What to eat in Seoul

Start with the kind of place, then the dish. These six forms cover most of what a first visit will meet, and each one sets its own rules for how you order and how long you stay.

The eight dishes below are the ones most tied to Seoul and its markets. Two are claimed by particular Seoul places rather than born there: dak-hanmari by the alley at Jongno 5-ga, and the small Gwangjang gimbap by its market.

Where to eat: the most useful neighbourhoods

Seoul's six areas each feed a different kind of meal. Four sit north of the Han River in the old centre, within a few subway stops of each other; Itaewon is a short ride south of Namsan, and Gangnam lies across the river.

How much does it cost to eat in Seoul?

Everyday food in Seoul is still good value, though prices have climbed quickly since 2024. A day of soup, noodles and a market plate costs little. Barbecue and samgyetang are the meals that lift the bill.

For the cost of a whole trip, see the cost of visiting South Korea.

Does Seoul have street food?

Yes, in three forms. The first is the market alley, where you sit on a bench at a stall: Gwangjang is the best known, and Namdaemun and Mangwon have smaller versions. The second is the pojangmacha, the tented stall on the pavement at night, selling spicy rice cakes, fish-cake skewers and sometimes soju at plastic tables. The third is the cart, most visible in Myeongdong in the evening, where most of the customers are visitors.

The pavement stalls are regulated. Seoul's street-stall permit system, georigage heogaje, introduced in 2019 and the first of its kind among Korea's big-city governments, lets a vendor trade legally in return for a road-occupation fee and conditions that keep the pavement passable.

One outlying market is worth the journey. At Noryangjin, the city's fish market south of the river, you buy seafood from the stalls on the ground floor and pay a restaurant upstairs to prepare it. Several guides describe the same routine; we could not confirm the current hours from an official source.

Cash is still useful at stalls and pojangmacha, though cards are accepted almost everywhere else. Eating while you walk is normal in the markets and on Myeongdong's street.

Building food into one day

This day works on any day of the week. It runs west across the old centre by subway, from a market breakfast to a barbecue dinner, with a quiet afternoon in between.

Practical advice for eating in Seoul

Most of Seoul's eating customs are easy to pick up at the first meal. These are the ones that change what you order or where you sit.

Vegetarian and dietary needs

Seoul is harder for vegetarians than it looks. Many soups and stews use an anchovy or meat stock, and most kimchi is made with salted fish or shrimp, so a dish of vegetables is often not vegetarian. Temple cuisine restaurants and a growing number of vegan places are the reliable choice. For allergies, carry a written note in Korean; we cannot promise that any dish is free of an allergen.

Drinking with food

Soju and beer come with almost every evening meal, and many of the late eating places double as bars. How that side of the night works, and what it costs, is in our Seoul nightlife guide.