The Traveling Vegan- Destination South Korea

In the land of kimchi and Korean BBQ, some may think it is impossible to be vegan while traveling to South Korea. On the contrary! With much help and thanks to my boyfriend, Matt, who has been living in the city Gunsan for the past 6 months, he was able to scope out dishes that I could eat as well as how to say "no egg" "no meat" and "no mayonnaise" when ordering for me.

My first meal was Bi Bim Bap, ordered with no egg. It's a rice dish with different types of veggies on top such as lettuce, sprouts, carrots and cucumbers. When you get your dish, you add this red hot sauce on top (a dollop is enough for me but most put a nice swirl over everything) and mix everything together. It was delicious and exactly what I needed after being on 2 flights in the past 15 hours or so! I liked the texture of the veggies and the sauce gives it a nice kick!

My favorite thing about Korean food is all the little side dishes, called banchan, that comes with each meal! This meal came with kimchi and picked radishes, as well as a broth that we were pretty sure had fish in it so I left that alone.

Kim Bap is pretty much like a vegetable roll that you get here in the states. It usually comes with ham and egg but we were able to get it made with just spinach, carrots, and picked radishes.

I think my favorite meal (we even had it 2 nights in a row) is Shabu Shabu. It was different from the Japanese or Chinese style Shabu Shabu I have had before. The broth is flavorful and spicy, and there are different greens inside as well as different types of hearty mushrooms. Udon noodles are added to the broth and veggies. The side dish of picked radishes here were SO good at this particular restaurant! I think the cool thing though, is that after most of the noodles and soup have been eaten, the waitress puts it in another bowl. Then they put rice in that bowl along with a variety of chopped veggies (ask for it without egg) and mix it all around the pot. When you receive the rice, it is stuck onto the sides of the bowl. It was really good and although we were stuffed, couldn't help but scraping off the rice and into our tummies.

I have to say it is pretty hard to stay away from the bakeries because I used to looove all the Asian bakeries with all kinds of breads with custards and yummy fillings inside and delicious flaky pastries. But a very vegan friendly snack? French fries! They had some kind of seasoning salt on it that was soo good I was craving something unhealthy and fried and this hit the spot :) The pomegranate juice was also good!

Did I mention that I looooove ramen like cookie monster loves cookies? I think next time I will make sure to buy sprouts and bok choy to add in it because I'm pretty sure everything about ramen is not good for you...but it is soo freakin' good :D And you can definitely find some that don't have meat flavors/broth/flavorings added in it. I've been told that all that flavoring stuff is fake anyways, it's all flavors made up in labs and that's why it's so cheap. It makes sense but I still like to play it safe!

Matt made dinner one night which consisted of tofu, sprouts, green onions, and cabbage. He was still working on the cabbage but it looked so good I had a piece of tofu and took this pic! It was definitely a yummy dinner and the leftovers the next day were even better when all the juices and soy sauce and hot sauce melded together and absorbed into everything. We had it with the BEST kimchi ever, with thanks to Eric! It's from a very non-vegan friendly BBQ place so they didn't want to take me there but Eric was able to buy it to go. So awesome. The cool thing about it was it had a nutty flavor, I've never tasted that before in kimchi.

Some other vegan friendly dishes included Japchae (a noodle dish made from potato starch with thinly sliced onions, carrots, green onions, spinach and mushroom.) We found some already made at the grocery store that was good. I usually buy it pre-made at the Korean Market (Hannam Chain Market World on Sepulveda in Torrance). Mushroom Soon Tobu (Tofu soup) that comes in bubbling clay pots was good as well and I have that at the Korean restaurants in town.

All in all, sometimes it was difficult to figure out if something was vegan or not since our Korean is limited and we couldn't read the ingredient list on most things! But all the dishes I had were flavorful and had great texture and a variety of ingredients (not bland at all as some perceive vegan cuisine to be.) I think for ovo-lacto vegetarians, there is even more food that can be had. We also need to learn how to say "vegan" or at least "vegetarian" in Korean...Matt just called me "vegetable person." (Don't know if they really got that or just thought he was a weirdo.)

Since I have been back I have already had Korean food more than once (today actually lol)-- mostly the Tofu soup but I am going to have some Bi Bim Bap next time to remind me of the good times in Korea!

PS: I also want to mention Hite and soju were the vegan beverages of choice haha