Seoraksan National Park - part V

Getting Vegetarian Food at Seoraksan National Park


First, let me say that I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian, i.e. I do eat eggs and dairy products.

Secondly, when I am travelling, especially if I am with non-vegetarian friends, I sometimes do settle with something meatless, but not necessarily strictly vegetarian (i.e. may contain meat base ingredients, but if there is a strong meaty or fishy taste, I won't be able to eat it and will end up wasting food. Normally dry food like fried rice is a safer bet than soup based food). If I am alone, I may just end up eating bread.

Before the trip, I tried to search for vegetarian food in Sokcho and Seoraksan on the internet, but really came up with nothing. So I was a little worried before the trip, but it turned out quite fine and I actually enjoyed most of my meals.

If you are really strict, the safest bet is to order bibimbap. In Seoul bibimbap would normally come with meat. But apparently in Sokcho, the version you get is sanchae bibimbap (sanchae literally means "mountain vegetable" 山菜), which do not contain meat. It might, however, have an egg in it. Within the Seoraksan National Park, I saw that sanchae bibimbap was on the menu of most restaurants. So you can survive on sanchae bibimbap for most part.

For Chinese Buddhist vegetarians, the additional difficulty is that Korean vegetarian food does not avoid the five pungent vegetables (like garlic, onion, chives, leek, scallions), even in the Buddhist temples. I found that leeks and chives are quite common in Korean temple food. That might be a problem if you are really strict about this. I am not observing religious vegetarianism, so that wasn't an issue for me.

For this trip, I did take kimchi from the non-veg restaurants. Strictly speaking, unless you are eating in a vegan restaurant, you should assume the kimchi is non-vegetarian. The reason is that kimchi is normally marinated with prawn paste and/or fish sauce. I always take a small bite first to check the taste. There was one kimchi which had a strong fishy taste and I had spit it out. But for most parts, the kimchi tend to be sweet and I couldn't detect any fish or prawn taste, so I actually enjoyed most of them.


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We arrive at the Sokcho Express Bus Terminal at 11:30 am, and decided to get lunch before heading up to Seoraksan. We found a row of restaurants on the right side of the bus terminal. There were pictures of what they serve. Most of them serve basically the same type of food, like the usual jiggaes and bibimbap. I saw bibimbap and know that I have at least a safe bet. Even if it comes with meat, the meat would not be mixed in and it would be easy to put the meat aside.

The ahjuma owner could not speak English. But she had a English menu. Looking at the menu, I saw soft tofu stew (sundubu jiggae) which is something I really liked. I decided to try my luck and see if I could get her to make a vegetarian version. The one on the menu had seafood.

I told her "soon-do-bu jiggae". She understood. Then I said "jay shik! jay shik!". She seemed confused at first. Then she said "chae shik" (I had said it wrongly. It should sound like "chay", not "jay". BTW, I kept saying "jay" because that's the word for vegetarian in Hokkien and Thai). I said "gogi no" and made the cross sign to indicate "no" and she nodded.

When the soft tofu stew arrive, it was vegetarian! No meat or seafood in it. And the soup seemed to be ok too (no taste of meat or bonito). Yeah! This turned out to be the best soft tofu stew for my whole Korea trip. It was spicy, just the way I liked it.

Actually, after that, I did not have any problem at other places. I just have say "chae shik" and "no gogi". That is sufficient to get you something meatless. I can't guarantee that it would totally be free from meat based ingredients (e.g. the kimchi served with the food is still like to have been fermented with small amount of prawn paste).

This was a small one-woman run restaurant. The ahjuma was chatting with another ahjuma after serving us. A Korean drama was running on the TV.

Red hot spicy Sundubu Jiggae, served with 5 side dishes: Kimchi, garlic flowers, raddish, anchovies and some kind of gourd. Note, the jiggae is topped with leeks. 8000 won for the jiggae. Side dishes and rice are part of the meal with not extra charge.

I ate the jiggae the way I saw some people do it in the Korean dramas: popped the rice into the stew and mix it all up!

Here, I might add a side story about Sundubu Jiggae. I first got to try this in USA (in a Korean restaurant in the Korean Town area of Portland, Oregon) more than 10 years ago. I liked it so much I remembered it. But I never get to try it again because I could not find a vegetarian version. So I was really glad I got to try it again this trip. The main difference was that in the Portland restaurant, the tofu was big blocks of soft tofu. But in Korea, all the tofu in all the stews I had tried are actually broken tofu.


That evening, it was late by the time we returned from the trek to Biryeong falls. Initially, we thought of having dinner in one of the restaurants within the park. But it was 7:30pm and they were all closed. We walked back to the hotel. There were 2 restaurant. One was a Korean BBQ, which is not suitable for me. So that left us with the family restaurant. This is similar to those restaurants down at Sokcho Express Bus Terminal. It was totally empty.

They had an English menu too. This time I ordered a bibimbap and a deonjang jiggae (bean paste stew) to share. My friend ordered an omu-rice (fried rice wrapped in an omelette).

Both my friend and I were disappointed by the food. The jiggae was really small portion (compared to the tofu jiggae I had in the afternoon. Cost the same: 8000won) and I didn't like the taste that much either. The side dishes were also not that great. As for the bibimbap was ok, but nothing to shout about.

Meal at a family restaurant near Sorak Park Hotel -- not that great.

On the second day, we had cup noodles for breakfast in the hotel room before heading out to the park. It was about 11:30am when we return from the cable trip. We randomly choose one of the restaurants within the park. This restaurant has plastic models of the food and an English menu.

I asked for "chae shik" again. I was given 2 options: sanchae bibimbap or acorn jelly rice.

I was game to try something different. Besides, it was really hot and the acorn jelly rice can be served with ice. So I asked for ice acorn jelly rice.

It came in a large bowl, with brown jelly strips in a dark broth, topped with seaweed, kimchi and sesame seed, and of course ice.

I don't know how "acorn" is supposed to taste like. But there wasn't any distinctive taste. I find it strange, because it was like eating savoury agar agar. The soup is soyu (soya sauce) based. I wasn't comfortable with the soup. It seemed to have bonito, though I couldn't be sure. My friend was quite sure it had bonito...

Anyway, now I know what acron jelly rice is like... Not interested to try again...

Ice acorn jelly. One of the side dish is pickled garlic.

After we came down from Ulsan Bawi rock, we took the bus back to the Sokcho express bus terminal and went into another restaurant. This time round, I order the Dolsot Bibimbap (hotstone bibimbap) and the "chae shik" sundubu jiggae again.

This time, the tofu stew is of a lighter color and not as spicy. It is also a smaller portion. It is quite tasty but I still prefer the one I had the day before.

The bibimbap was quite good. But I think in general bibimbap in hot stone taste better than the cold version. I like to scrap the rice crust off the hot stone bowl. That's the best part of hot stone bibimbap! Of course, a good gochujang (the hot sauce mixed into the rice) will make a lot of difference as well.

I have not tried bibimbap in Singapore before. But I always see that it comes with raw cucumber and carrot slices. But in Korean, it seemed that the vegetables in the bibimbap are mostly cooked or pickled, not raw.

My friend ordered the Abai Sundae (stuffed squid) and thoroughly enjoyed it. So it worked out well.

Another soft tofu stew in another restaurant. Still good, though I prefer the spicier version the day before.

Dolsot Bibimbap. It has various vegetables and an egg in it.

The next day we are back at Express Bus Terminal again. This time we ate at another restaurant run by a younger lady.

I decided to try something different. I asked for Kimchi Jiggae without meat. I think the taste between kimchi jiggae and tofu jiggae are basically the same -- just that one has kimchi and the other has tofu. I still prefer Sundubu Jiggae.

Kimchi Jiggae. Not bad, but I still prefer tofu stew.

In the evening, we were at the Sokcho Lighthouse. There were many restaurants around the area. However, all of them were serving raw seafood. They had tanks outside, with squids and fishes swimming in them. I was not sure if they might have vegetarian options -- it would definitely be strange to walk into a live seafood restaurant and asked for vegetarian food. In any case, I was definitely not comfortable eating in these restaurants (even in Singapore, I would definitely avoid any restaurants serving live seafood).

My friend was understanding enough. We walked a bit and didn't see anything suitable. So we took bus 9-1 back to the Express Bus Terminal.

I wanted to go back to the restaurant we ate the day we arrived. The owner of the restaurant we visited the 2nd day saw us and manage to get us into her restaurant :).

I ordered the Dolsot Bibimbap again. I considered adding another jiggae, but decided to drop it as I thought I had been over-eating quite a bit on the trip.

My friend tried the other type of sundae (blood sausage, actually stuffed intestines). He thought the stuff squid was better.

My second Dolsot Bibimbap. Mixed the rice up a bit and then let it cooked in the hotstone pot for a while before eating.

Even though I was quite worried about food before the trip, it all ended up and I actually got to enjoy the food!