Korean food is built around sharing: a table fills up with small dishes before you have ordered anything, and the main event is often something you cook yourself. The flavours are fermented and aggressive — chilli, garlic, soybean and vinegar — and the meal is designed to be eaten with rice and alcohol, in that order or all at once.
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Thick pork belly grilled at the table, wrapped in lettuce with garlic, ssamjang and kimchi. The national meal out.
You cook it yourself on the grill set into the table, and the staff will come over to cut the meat with scissors. The wrap is the technique: lettuce leaf, meat, a dab of fermented bean paste, raw garlic, then eaten in one bite. Soju is the expected accompaniment.
A stew of aged kimchi, pork and tofu, sour and deep. The dish to order on a cold day.
It is made with kimchi that has gone properly sour — fresh kimchi does not work, which is why Korean fridges always have a container of the older batch. The stew is finished with tofu that soaks up the red broth, and it arrives boiling in a stone pot.
Rice with arranged vegetables, beef, egg and gochujang, mixed at the table. In Jeonju it is a serious dish, not fast food.
Jeonju is the self-declared capital of bibimbap and makes it with raw beef and a dozen vegetables. The dolsot version is served in a hot stone bowl, which crisps the rice at the bottom — the best part, and something the mixed-in-a-bowl version loses.
Cold buckwheat noodles in iced broth or spicy sauce, eaten in summer. Served with scissors.
The noodles are buckwheat and starch, chewy enough that they arrive pre-cut with scissors. The mulnaengmyeon version is a chilled beef broth with ice; the bibim version is dressed in chilli sauce. It is a northern dish that became a national summer obsession.
Chewy rice cakes in a sweet-spicy gochujang sauce, sold from street stalls and eaten standing up.
The sauce is gochujang, sugar and anchovy stock, and the rice cakes are dense enough that they stay chewy rather than dissolving. The street version often includes fish cake and boiled egg, and it is one of the cheapest things you can eat in Seoul.
Double-fried chicken with a glossy sauce or a plain salt crust, eaten with beer at night.
The double fry is what makes it — the first cook sets the crust, the second crisps it and drives the moisture out. Chimaek (chicken and beer) is a genuine social institution, and the best shops do not open until the evening.
A fermented soybean paste stew with tofu, courgette and mushroom. The everyday stew.
Doenjang is the Korean answer to miso but stronger, chunkier and saltier. The stew is often made with anchovy stock, and it is the standard home dish rather than a restaurant speciality — every household makes it differently.
Sweet potato glass noodles stir-fried with vegetables, beef and soy, eaten at celebrations.
The noodles are made from sweet potato starch and are translucent and springy. The dish is seasoned with soy and sesame rather than chilli, which makes it the mild option on an otherwise spicy table, and it is a standard dish for holidays and birthdays.
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