A First-Timer's Guide to Choosing Korean Food

The first thing that catches a visitor out in a Korean restaurant is not the menu. It is what arrives on the table. You order one dish and the table fills with a bowl of rice, a bowl of soup, and several small plates nobody asked for. This guide explains that arrangement, then how to decide what kind of meal you want and how to read the names on the menu. The detail for each kind lives in other articles on this site.

At a glance

Three positions, not one plate
Rice, soup, and side dishes that arrive unordered.
The last syllable is the method
-guk, -jjigae, -jeongol, -gui, -bokkeum and -jorim each map to one English word in the official notation.
The printed price is the price
Menu prices must be the final figure, VAT included.
The name does not list the ingredients
Broths and sauces are invisible in a dish name. Ask.

A table has three positions

Whatever restaurant you walk into, three things tend to appear.

Rice — usually in its own bowl. Some dishes put it into the soup (gukbap), and some announce the separation in the name itself: ttaro-gukbap means the rice is served apart.
Soup — the partner of the rice. A liquid dish is not automatically the main course; a soup often arrives as an accompaniment to something else.
Side dishes (banchan) — brought without being ordered, and normally at no charge. How many plates you get differs from house to house.

So one order fills the table with five or six vessels. You have not under-ordered. How to handle the side dishes, whether refills are free, and what to do where a self-service bar is involved are covered in How to order at a Korean restaurant.

Kalguksu topped with dumplings — the noodle branch

Mobius6 (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Jeonju bibimbap in a stone pot — the rice branch

Seefooddiet (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Momguk, pork broth loosened with gulfweed — the soup branch

공석배 (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Five branches to choose between

"Korean food" covers a lot of ground, so it is quicker to decide what kind of meal you want before you decide where to eat. There are roughly five branches.

Houses that grill meat — a burner comes to the table, or the kitchen grills and plates it. The price is often attached to weight rather than to a serving, which makes the arithmetic different from everywhere else. How to order Korean BBQ handles that separately.
A bowl of soup — gukbap, seolleongtang, gomtang, kalguksu. The price is attached to the bowl, which also makes this the easiest branch to eat alone.
Noodles — cold buckwheat noodles, knife-cut noodles and the rest come by the bowl. Six hand-cut noodle houses compares a set of them in Seoul.
Snack food and street food — tteokbokki, sundae, fritters, fish cake: sold by the piece, the skewer or the plate. See A guide to Korean street food.
Seafood — thickens as you move toward the port cities. For Busan, start with What to eat in Busan.

Houses differ inside a branch as well. Even within "a bowl of soup", Eight bowls, seven broths shows how differently the liquid can be made.

A dish name is usually an ingredient plus a method

A great many Korean dish names are built as ingredient + cooking method, which means the last syllable tells you half of what will arrive.

Sorted by that last syllable, the Korean Food Promotion Institute's official notation list maps the method to one English word almost every time.

Ending	Entries in the list	English rendering	Example
-guk (국)	45	Soup (45/45)	Doenjangguk 된장국
-jjigae (찌개)	20	Stew (20/20)	Kimchijjigae 김치찌개
-jeongol (전골)	15	Hot Pot (15/15)	Mandujeongol 만두전골
-bokkeum (볶음)	32	Stir-fried (32/32)	Jeyukbokkeum 제육볶음
-jorim (조림)	24	Braised (24/24)	Galchijorim 갈치조림
-gui (구이)	46	Grilled (44/46)	Moksalgui 목살구이
-muchim (무침)	33	Salad (33/33)	Kongnamulmuchim 콩나물무침

One ending refuses to behave, and it is -tang (탕). Of its 51 entries, 34 are rendered Soup and 15 Stew — and 13 of those 15 are fish or shellfish simmered together (the maeuntang family, haemultang, kkotgetang, mineotang). The other two are gamjatang and beoseotdeulkkaetang. So a "-tang" that turns out fiery rather than clear is usually a fish one.

🔴 But 34 plus 15 is 49, not 51. The remaining two are neither Soup nor Stew — 고구마맛탕 is listed as Deep-fried and Sugar Glazed Sweet Potatoes and 닭볶음탕 as Spicy Braised Chicken, and neither is eaten with a spoon. How far this ending strays, and how far real menu boards sit from the list, are taken up in Guk, Tang, Jjigae, Jeongol.

Some names are not in the list on their own at all. Galbi, naengmyeon and gukbap appear only with something attached — galbitang, pyeongyang-naengmyeon, dwaeji-gukbap. Menus behave the same way, which is why "galbi" by itself does not tell you whether it will be grilled or simmered.

What a name cannot tell you is the broth and the seasoning

Three places hide ingredients that neither the name nor the appearance reveals.

Broth — anchovy or meat stock is common even under vegetable dishes.
Seasoning — chilli paste, soybean paste and salted seafood get mixed in without appearing in the name.
Side dishes — they arrive unordered, so you cannot know in advance what they will be.

The useful question is therefore not about ingredients but about method. Vegetarian and vegan readers should start with Vegetarian and vegan food in Korea; halal readers with Finding halal food in Korea. Both carry Korean sentences you can show at the counter.

There is one label you can read. Restaurants are legally required to state the origin of six meats, rice, cabbage kimchi and soybean, and domestic beef is broken down further into hanu, yugu and dairy-cow beef. That board tells you where the ingredients came from; it does not tell you how they were cooked. Those are different questions.

Look at what the price is attached to

Before comparing two numbers, work out what each number is attached to. It may be a bowl, a shared plate, or a weight.

Counting the menus this site holds makes the difference visible. Of 103 restaurant records, 99 carry a menu, and those menus hold 216 rows, 154 of them with a price. Of those 216 rows, only 10 say whether the figure is for one person. Seventeen offer small/medium/large sizes, and three state a weight.

In other words, most menu lines do not say how many people the price covers. That is not a gap in this site's records; it is how menus are written. Asking is the normal way to read one.

The printed figure itself can be trusted. A restaurant's stated price must be the final amount including VAT, and premises of 150 square metres or more must post the price list both outside and inside. Nothing is added at the till.

How to use this distinction when you are on your own continues in Eating alone in Korea.

If you are choosing a first meal

If you cannot pick a branch, a bowl of soup fails least often. The price is attached to the bowl so no group condition can arise, rice and side dishes come with it so the meal is complete, and the name usually names the main ingredient outright.

The branch worth saving for later is the grill house. Prices attached to weight and minimum-order conditions make the arithmetic unfamiliar, and it is easier once you have read how it works.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to order the side dishes?

No. They arrive without being ordered and are normally free. How many plates you get differs from house to house, and some places use a self-service bar or charge for refills, so it is worth glancing at any notice on the wall.

Can I tell what a dish is from its name?

About half of it. In the Korean Food Promotion Institute's notation list, all 45 -guk entries render as Soup, all 20 -jjigae as Stew, all 15 -jeongol as Hot Pot and all 32 -bokkeum as Stir-fried. The exception is -tang: 34 of its 51 entries are Soup and 15 are Stew, and 13 of those 15 involve fish or shellfish. The remaining two are neither — 고구마맛탕 and 닭볶음탕 are not soups at all.

If the menu says galbi, is it grilled?

You cannot tell from that alone. Galbi is not a standalone entry in the official list; it appears only in compounds such as galbitang, galbijjim and sogalbigui. On a menu the same word can equally mean something simmered or something grilled.

Can I tell how spicy something will be?

Not from the name. A dish with maeun (spicy) in it certainly is; the absence of the word does not mean the opposite. Some dishes can be made milder on request and some cannot for structural reasons, so it is worth asking when you order.

Is a service charge added to the printed price?

A restaurant's stated price must be the final amount with VAT included, and premises of 150 square metres or more must post the list both outside and inside. A small number of upmarket places do levy a service charge, and they state it on the menu.

As a vegetarian or a halal diner, what should I check first?

The broth and the seasoning rather than the visible ingredients. A plate that looks entirely vegetable is often built on anchovy or meat stock, and restaurant kimchi ordinarily contains salted seafood. This site's vegetarian and halal guides carry Korean sentences written for exactly that conversation.