Vistor Notes:
Subject: 'Actually fairly vegetarian friendly'
Posted by westcornersville on: Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 03:28 PM PST

Korea usually isn't the first place people think of for vegetarian foods (especially given how it's famous for "weird" meats and fish)--but there are quite a few options. Other than the obvious vegetarian restaurants listed here, there are porridge places, which have rather bland food, but usually have vegetarian porridges, like pumpkin porridge, pine nut porridge, etc. Usually, Korean porridge is vegetarian unless there's specifically some type of meat/fish indicated (like the common abalone porridge)--though again, it's not too exciting basically being mostly rice, water and the "main ingredient" like pumpkin or pine nuts. Also, bibimbap can be made vegan (if the fried egg is left off), but (if you can) check to see if the accompanying kimchi is vegetarian (sometimes--but not always--it will have shrimp paste). Check out the street vendors too--a lot of them sell corn-on-the-cob and roasted acorn nuts as snacks. If you want some variety in your cuisine, there's the occasional Indian, Chinese, Thai, Middle Eastern, Italian, etc. restaurant too (at least in the bigger cities). Of course, you probably want to eat a lot of Korean food since after all you're visiting Korea, and there are most certainly a lot of "unusual" vegetarian foods to try--acorn jelly (and acorn noodles), mung bean jelly (though that's eaten in other parts of East Asia too), balloon flowers, bell flower soup, fernbrake, etc.

Subject: 'Site Address Changed...'
Posted by BrienneAmber on: Friday, February 23, 2007 at 09:14 AM PST

The new site with lots of veg info relating to Korea is now: www.vegetariankorea.org