What do people eat in South Korea?
In South Korea a meal means rice, soup and shared side dishes called banchan, with kimchi at almost every one. Breakfast, lunch and dinner can look much the same.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
A traditional Korean breakfast is not a separate kind of meal: rice, a soup or stew, kimchi and a few banchan, the same as lunch. Many people in cities now skip it or grab something quick on the way to work, like toast from a street stall, a roll of gimbap or a coffee.
Lunch
Lunch is usually from 12:00 to 13:00 and many office workers eat out together. Popular choices are kimchi jjigae, a spicy kimchi and pork stew with rice, bibimbap, rice with vegetables, egg and gochujang chilli paste, about 560 kcal a bowl, and in summer naengmyeon, cold buckwheat noodles in icy broth.
Dinner
Dinner out often means Korean barbecue: samgyeopsal, thick slices of pork belly, or marinated bulgogi beef, grilled at the table. People wrap the meat in a lettuce leaf with garlic and ssamjang paste, which is called ssam. At home dinner is rice, soup and banchan, often with grilled fish or a stew.
Starters
There are no real starters. Banchan, small shared side dishes like kimchi, seasoned spinach, bean sprouts and braised potatoes, arrive at the start and stay through the meal, and most restaurants refill them for free. Kimchi is about 30 kcal a portion. Pajeon, a spring onion pancake, is shared with makgeolli.
Desserts
After a meal people usually eat fresh fruit, like cut apple, pear or tangerines. Bingsu, shaved ice with milk, sweet red beans, fruit or rice cakes, is the summer dessert, shared from one big bowl. Tteok, rice cakes, are eaten at holidays, and hotteok, a pancake filled with brown sugar syrup, is a winter street snack.
Drinks
Soju is the national drink, a clear spirit of about 16 to 20 percent, drunk in small shots with food. Makgeolli is a milky rice wine, often with pajeon on rainy days. Beer goes with fried chicken, and somaek is soju mixed into beer. With meals, restaurants serve water or roasted barley tea, boricha, for free.
Street food
Street carts and pojangmacha, covered tents with plastic stools, sell tteokbokki, chewy rice cakes in a sweet spicy red sauce, eomuk, fish cake on skewers with broth, sundae (blood sausage), gimbap and hotteok. Myeongdong and Gwangjang Market in Seoul are full of stalls in the evening.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
Fried chicken with beer, chimaek, is a night out of its own, and chicken is delivered almost anywhere, even to a spot in a park by the Han River. On the hottest days of summer people eat samgyetang, a hot chicken soup with ginseng. Staff cut meat and noodles with scissors at the table, and on birthdays people eat seaweed soup, miyeokguk.