My first ever trip to Korea was a bit of a mixed bag. I knew that we would be there in rainy season (July), but I lived in Vietnam before, I thought I could handle rainy season – one big, well telegraphed downpour per day, but otherwise clear to be out and about. Alas, Korean rainy season is quite intense! The main problem we had was that the weather forecast changed constantly, so we never had any reliable information about when we should schedule indoor or outdoor activities. If the rain was scheduled for 10am-1pm, we’d not set our alarms, enjoy a lie in, and plan to be out and about in the afternoon. Then of course by the time we woke up, the rain had changed to early afternoon. Then it changed to late afternoon. And on and on and on. It did rain, and a lot, we just never really knew when it would happen, which was a bit frustrating. We had a full week in Seoul, so we did manage to get out and about and see things, it was just all a bit trickier than planned.

Our rainy trip to Korea started in Seoul, so let’s dive in to the vegan scene there. I had been really excited about trying Korean vegan food. We go to a vegan Korean restaurant in Berlin that I absolutely love, so I was hoping for dishes like the ones we get there (find out more here). But to be honest, my overall finding was that the food was either packed with so much chilli heat that I couldn’t bear it, or quite bland. There were certainly some good dishes though, and as a big fan of vegan chicken I was in heaven on that front.

Vegan Insa

Vegan Insa was set up slightly strangely – there was a main building which was full, so we were seated in small room across the courtyard which just had two tables in it. Happily, it was air conditioned. We ordered from a machine in the main restaurant building and paid while ordering, and the staff brought the food out to us when it was ready. We ordered the Korean fried chicken, tteokbokki, and bulgogi with rice.

The Korean fried chicken had a fantastic flavour. It was spicy without being too fiery (despite my complaint above). However, the texture wasn’t quite right. It was quite soft and didn’t have enough bite to it.

Dr HH ordered his favourite Korean dish, tteokbokki, which was served with mandu, fish cakes, and fried vegetables. He enjoyed the spiciness of the tteokbokki and thought the mandu was a great addition with a really nice filling. The fish cakes didn’t taste of fish, unfortunately. The batter on the vegetables was a bit heavy, but still good. The menu said there would be fried shrimp and it was just vegetables, which was a shame.

I ordered bulgogi, which I had never tried before, and it was fine but not really for me. Everything in the dish was quite soft. Every bite had the same texture and the same (quite mild) flavour, so it was not a very exciting meal. I don’t have any other bulgogi experience to compare it to, so I’ll assume that I just don’t much care for this dish in general. I’d definitely visit again but order a different dish.

Maru JaYeonSik Kimbap

We tried to get as much Korean food as we could, rather than going for western options like burgers, so this spot was high on our list. It’s more of a market/food stall place with seating than a sit down restaurant, which means seating is quite limited and it may not be the perfect location when it’s raining. Fortunately we were there when it was more of a drizzle, so we just about got away with it.

We shared the ham gimbap, which were quite tasty. The soy ham was good, but was maybe a bit lost among the vegetables which had sharper tastes and crisper textures.

I also got the mandu. They had the perfect texture and were really well fried, but the filling was a little bland for me. They really relied on the dipping sauce for flavour – and the dipping sauce was excellent!

The bibimbap had a good variety of vegetables and a really flavoursome sauce. It was a hearty potion, but Dr HH was up to the challenge! He’s not that bowled over by bibimbap as a dish, but was quite pleased with this one.

Service was fast, friendly, and easy to understand as a foreign tourist.

Plantude – I’Park Mall Yongsan

One day Dr HH was flying solo because I stayed in the hotel suffering with a cold, so he took the opportunity to go for some fusion cuisine and get an exciting tteokbokki dish he’d been eyeing up.

He got the truffle sea trumpet cream tteokbokki and really enjoyed it. It was interesting to get this dish with a creamy sauce that had a good taste of the sea from the herbs and seasoning, rather than the usual spicy sauce that comes with tteokbokki. The rice cakes were longer than the ones you get in the typical dish, more like a very thick noodle. The fried enoki mushrooms added some good texture too. He was a big fan of this dish.

He also got some garlic bread on the side, which was largely fine but reportedly a bit sweet when he had a bite of it on its own without a dunk in the sauce. What a shame!

Vegan Kitchen

We came here twice while we were in Seoul, and got takeaway as well on the night I was too ill to go out, so you can surmise that we were pretty satisfied with the dishes we got.

Dr HH of course got the tteokboki. The portion was hearty and the sauce was tasty with a good level of spiciness. There were a few bits of vegetables in there but nothing too exciting.

I had the japchae, which sounded like a suitably non-spicy dish. I enjoyed the sesame taste and the texture of the noodles, which were good and slippery. The vegetables in the dish added some decent texture too.

We shared a plate of fried chicken too. This was reminiscent of good chicken nuggets. The coating was really crispy and well seasoned. The texture of the chicken was good and it tasted like chicken too (to two people who have not eaten meat for over 25 years).

On our second visit, Dr HH got the kimchi fried rice. The rice was a bit unexciting, unfortunately. It didn’t have a lot of flavour and he felt the best spicy and sour notes of kimchi weren’t really there. It was also very much just a rice dish without much else to make each bite interesting – but that’s always the problem with fried rice.

He also had the chicken in spicy sauce. The sauce on the chicken was good and sticky, a bit sweet and a bit spicy, but not as packed with chilli heat as he hoped. Obviously it was too spicy for me.

Craving some vegetables to fend off my cold, I got the bibimbap and quite enjoyed it. There was a good range of textures from the vegetables, and I liked the flavour from the seaweed and the sauce.

There was also some banchan (complementary side dishes), the same dishes both time we dined in the restaurant. The cold pasta dish was a little unpleasant for me, but otherwise these were good.

And we were served by a robot! What a novelty! The restaurant wasn’t very busy when we were there, so the robot could easily cross the room to get to us undisturbed. To continue to reduce human interaction, we also ordered from a tablet on the table. Cutlery was secreted away in a drawer under the table. Overall, this was our favourite spot for Korean food in Seoul.

SanChon Korean Temple Cooking

This restaurant was recommended even in the non-vegan blogs and itineraries I was reading, so I thought we should give it a go to try some classic temple food. I’m not disappointed that we went, but I do think it’s ultimately a classic example of non-vegans thinking that something is a really great example of vegan food, and vegans very much disagreeing. It was fine, but not as good as any of the other Korean vegan restaurants we tried on this trip.

We ordered a set meal for two, which provided us with a lot of food.

The first thing we got was a cold pine tea, which had a very strong fermented flavour and tasted alcoholic. We also got a pot of mulberry tea which tasted much better. After that we got a few plates of little starter bites and a couple of soups. Everything was generally fine but unremarkable, though I really didn’t like the taste of the dark cracker thing in the bottom right corner. The highlights were probably the little bits of mushroom and radish topped with a white powder, in the top left corner. We also got a cabbage pancake, which was incredibly oily and therefore a little unpleasant to eat.

The main course consisted of a whopping 16 different dishes along with a pot of miso soup and a bowl of rice each. The soup was tasty, and I approve of how much tofu was in it (the more the merrier, for me). The rice was in a stone pot, so there were some nice crispy bits around the edge, which we both loved. The waiter seemed to be advising us to pour some of our tea into the rice, but he was so quiet that we couldn’t be sure what he said and didn’t want to make fools of ourselves. I tried to discreetly observe our Korean neighbours, who did look like they were pouring tea into the rice bowl, but we weren’t confident enough to go for it. What if it was an elaborate prank?!

Everything from the mains was fine. Nothing was really bursting with flavour, with the exception of a few things that were very spicy (generally anything in bright red sauce was spicy). Some of the greens in the middle had a nice sesame and chilli taste to them, and there was tofu with some bits of seaweed that tasted good. Dr HH enjoyed the spicy stuff, and we both thought the japchae noodles were quite good.

Overall, it was a good experience but the food was not mind blowing. It was fun to be able to try lots of different dishes, but unfortunately nothing really stood out and made us want more.

Camouflage

We did eventually break from all-Korean places to go to this vegan American Chinese restaurant. We came here without really having a sense of what American Chinese food is, but the menu looked like it had some interesting options so we decided to give it a go. In terms of portion size, it definitely aligned with my experience of American restaurants anyway!

Dr HH had the orange chicken with fried rice. We both decided to pay a little bit more and get the ‘real crispy’ option for the chicken. We were happy to report that the coating was indeed crispy, even after a coating of sticky, sweet, and spicy orange sauce. He enjoyed the flavour and found it a well-balanced dish. The texture of the chicken was not good though, it was incredibly tough and chewy. It took a long time to chew each piece, and there was one he just couldn’t bite through.

I followed suit with the teriyaki chicken (real crispy) with fried rice, but I thought that it didn’t taste of very much. Dr HH had a piece and thought it was great, so maybe the coating of the sauce wasn’t very even or my cold was messing with my taste buds. The texture of the chicken here was the same as the orange chicken, and not particularly enjoyable.

The fried rice was fine, it had plenty of vegetables in it but wasn’t really seasoned unfortunately.

We also got a plate of shrimp to share. They had a good bouncy texture and nice crispy coating, but didn’t really taste of much.

All in all, we were a bit disappointed by the textures and some of the seasoning. But maybe it was an off day or we ordered poorly.

Vampire’s Chicken

Dr HH had his eye on Vampire Chicken from the first moment we arrived in Seoul, so we had to give it a try even though it was nowhere near where we were staying or any attractions we had lined up. It turned out to be well worth the detour!

We placed our order on a piece of paper at the counter, but the staff warned us that that the spicy BBQ chicken we wanted might be too spicy for us. They recommended the spicy hot pot chicken instead, so that’s what we got, along with a peanut and chilli sauce. I just got the plain chicken.

The chicken was delicious. The coating was excellent, really well seasoned and very crispy. The texture was enjoyable. It wasn’t really trying to imitate chicken, it was clearly a well made piece of seitan that was enjoyable to eat. The spicy hot pot sauce was perfect for Dr HH, it had great flavour that at first didn’t seem spicy but the heat grew. The peanut sauce was also very good and was milder, with a little chilli kick to it. The food also came with some pickled radishes, mustard, and salt.

It’s a small place with only about 6-8 seats so be prepared for takeaway if it’s busy. It used to be all vegan, but apparently quite recently it started serving meat as well, so make sure to specify if you’re ordering vegan or not. I would definitely recommend this place if you’re a fan of vegan chicken!

Activities in Seoul

There are lots of palaces and temples in Seoul, and we saw just a few of them, which I’ll recap here (other activities to follow in the next post). On the palace front, we were most impressed with Deoksugung Palace, probably because we saw it under a beautiful blue sky rather than rain clouds.

The palace grounds also contain the National Museum of Contemporary Art, which had a sensational embroidery exhibition on when we visited. We initially expected to just have a quick scoot around the museum, but we were absolutely engrossed. I feel inspired to try embroidery now!

The only other palace we visited was Gyeongbokgung Palace, which was absolutely full of tourists. It’s generally considered to be the best palace in Seoul, so it’s no surprise that it was packed. As you can see, the weather was a bit less favourable on this day, so the colours weren’t quite as popping as in Deoksugung Palace. It was really great to see hills in the background in one direction and the modern cityscape in the other.

We also saw a couple of good temples. Jogyesa temple had a very similar look to the palaces – we saw a lot of this green while we were in Korea! At first it was really refreshing and fun because it’s so different to the colour schemes in Japan, and completely unlike anything in Europe. But every palace and temple used the same colours, so it didn’t stay quite so fresh.

And we went to Bongeunsa temple on an extremely rainy day. This is famous for the huge statue you see here, which did keep things nice and interesting! This is just a small sample of the many palaces and temples in Seoul, and we were impressed with what we saw but not necessarily dying to see more.