Korean food for vegetarians

We really wanted to try Korean food, but we don't eat meat and Josie doesn't love seafood. We found that if we ignored that kimchi has shrimp or anchovies and were willing to pick out some ham, we could indeed eat Korean food. We were surprised that we liked basically everything we tried. It helps that we like kimchi.

This is gim-bahp - essentially Korean sushi. We picked the ham (spam?) out of it and it was pretty good.


The famed bibimbap (rice, egg, vegetables in a hot pot):


A spicy soft tofu stew:


This is one of the Korean beers. It's not delicious but the label reminded us of toothpaste.


Greasy street food - really hit the spot, actually.


We did not eat these bugs but they were a very popular snack.


Kimchi at the market.

They had some good sweet street food like a hard candy, waffles, roasted chestnuts, etc. Twice in Busan we ate at The Loving Hut. We're pretty sure it's owned by a cult whose leader is called The Supreme Master. Aside from that, they had lovely vegan Korean food for really affordable prices. Korean food is spicy, which was a welcome change from Japanese food which is meant for much more subtle palates than ours. It's not our favorite cuisine, by any means, but we were surprised by how much we liked it, especially given that we couldn't eat Korean barbecue or some of the other more famous meat/seafood dishes.