Are you new to Korea (or planning to come) and want to know how to order food at one of the local eateries, or just know what it is? Do you live somewhere else and want to impress that beautiful waitress (or waiter, I guess) at your local Korean restaurant?

Well, despair no more, friends, because I’m going to give you the beginnings of a Rosetta Stone for ordering Korean food with style and aplomb and hopefully not too much embarrassed-for-you giggling.

It might help a little to peruse Learning to Read Korean Part 1 and Part 2 (Parts 3 and 4 are upcoming) before you jump in, but I’ll try and provide some phonetic cues in this article which will make it unnecessary to actually be able read Korean (that said, it’s really easy, so I encourage you to give it a go!)

Throughout this article, I’ll use the Korean, then the revised romanization, then a phonetic approximation for those who are not familiar with the sounds of Korean (regrettably, a prerequisite for proper pronunciation of the revised romanization scheme), then the translation.

An example: 밥 – bap, ‘bahp’, rice (cooked)

Dining Customs

In Korea, you order your main dish, which is frequently some kind of soup or stew, often served individually in a heated stone or clay bowl to each diner, or in a larger pot or pan in the center of the table over a gas fire, which is shared amongst everyone at the table. Also shared are the constellation of 반찬 (banchan, ‘bahnchahn’, side dishes) — the more there are, the more sumptous the meal is perceived to be. It is perfectly fine to ask for more of a given side-dish if it’s all eaten (and is provided without charge), and it is unnecessary to eat all of the each of the side dishes (and in fact might give a bit of an impression of gluttony).

Everyone also gets a small individual lidded stainless (or sometimes ceramic) bowl of short-grain, glutinous rice, which you are generally expected to finish. Long-grain, ‘fluffy’ rice is almost unheard of — if that’s what you get in an overseas Korean restaurant, it’s just not the Real Thing. The rice bowl is customary kept to the diner’s left, and the soup or stew to the right. Stainless steel chopsticks and long-handled shallow steel spoons are customary, although Korean folks (overseas or in touristed areas of Korea) may try and be ‘helpful’ and give you a fork. Be gracious, thank them, and put it aside in favour of the chopsticks. Many restaurants (but by no means all) have areas with floor seating and table-and-chair seating; the former is, of course, the traditional style.

Food is very regional, and every little village and town has its own specialties, for which, according to the locals of that hamlet, it is justifiably famous. Regions also tend to have their own takes on standard dishes like 김치 (kimchi) or 김밥 (kimbap) or 비빔밥 (bibimbap).

Some etiquette no-nos if eating with Koreans (or just trying to be polite a la mode Koreane): don’t

• blow your nose at the table
• pick up your utensils and start eating before the eldest person at the table does so
• stick your chopsticks upright in your rice and leave them (edit: this is done with the rice offering during annual graveside ceremonies to honour ancestors, and so is inappropriate to do at a convivial dinner)
• pour your own liquor — watch what others are doing (the matter of drinking etiquette deserves its own essay, which I’ll tackle sometime later

Answers.com mentions a few other things as constituting bad table manners

Bad manners include [...] chewing with an open mouth, talking with food in one’s mouth, [...] stabbing foods with chopsticks, mixing rice and soup, and picking up food with one’s hands…

As far as I’ve seen in 10 years here, those are pretty much nonsense, at least in any but the most absolutely formal of situations.

The Language Of Food

Here are some vocabulary elements that show up in the names of various foods, and will help you to guess what category, at least, the dish might fit into.

밥 – bap, ‘bahp’, rice (cooked)
장 – jang, ‘jahng’, paste
자장 – jajang, ‘jahjang’, black bean paste
된 – doen, ‘dwehn’, fermented soy beans
고추 – gochu, ‘gohchoo’, hot pepper
김 – gim, ‘k/gim’, dried laver seaweed (the initial sound is partway between ‘k’ and ‘g’, usually romanized in the past as ‘k’) (note also, that it’s not the same 김 and the one in 김치 (kimchi).
떡 – deok, ‘dduhk’, chewy rice cake (the inital ‘d’ is highly aspirated)
두부 = dubu, ‘dooboo’, tofu
고기 – gogi, ‘gogee’, meat
닭 – ‘dak’, ‘dahk’, chicken
돼지 – ‘doeji’, ‘dwehjee’, pork
감자 – ‘kamcha’, ‘kahmcha’, potato
회 – hoe, ‘hweh’, raw fish or other raw seafood
찌개 – jjigae, ‘jeegay’, soup or stew
탕 – tang, ‘tahng’, soup or stew
국 – guk, ‘gook’, soup or stew
면 – myeon, ‘myuhn’, noodles
주 – ju, ‘joo’, alcoholic beverage (소주, 맥주, 동동주, etc)
차 – cha, ‘chah’, tea
물 – mul, ‘mool’, water
불 – bul, ‘bool’, fire

비빔 – bibim, ‘beebeem’, mixed
냉 – neng, ‘nehng’, cool or cold

Those syllables (there are many many more, of course) are enough to get you well down the path of figuring out the most common Korean menu items! Let’s start putting them together and see what we get. (

된+장 = fermented soy bean + paste: one of the most common bases for soups and stews.
고추+장 = hot pepper + paste: the other most common flavouring, after 마늘 maneul, ‘mahneuhl’, garlic)

See how easy it is?

How about the everyday light meal or snack, 김밥?

Well, 김+밥 = seaweed rice, which is what it is. Rice with goodies, wrapped in a seaweed roll. Sushi roll ahoy!

How about that old dinner standby, 불고기?

불 + 고기 = fire meat. Sounds painful, but it’s the grilled marinated beef that is iconic of Korean BBQ. Variations are 닭 불고기 (chicken + fire + meat) and 돼지 불고기 (pork + fire + meat).

Now, let’s put together some even longer dish names, why don’t we?

된장찌개 = 된+장+찌개 = soybean + paste + stew.
김치찌개 = 김치+찌개 = kimchi + stew.
두부 찌개 = 두부+ 찌개 = tofu stew. Woohoo!

What about that other everyday Korean food that everybody knows and loves, 비빔밥?

비빔+밥= mixed + rice, which is exactly what it is (except you do the mixing, which adds to the Power of the Delicious, if you do it right). And, of course, it’s what you mix in with the rice and the 고추장 that makes it sing. A sunnyside-up fried egg on top is mandatory, in my humble.

Let’s try that again with another noun. How about

비빔면 = 비빔+면 = mixed noodles, the noodle equivalent of 비빔밥.

A standard Koreanized Chinese food is 자장면. What’s that?

자장 + 면 = black bean paste + noodles.

One of my all-time favorite Korean foods is 냉면. What does that mean?

It’s easy: 냉+면 = cold + noodles.

We can get even fancier, because there are two kinds of 냉면.

물 냉면 = water + cold + noodles (cold buckwheat noodles in a cool broth)
비빔 냉면 = mixed + cold + noodles (cold buckwheat noodles with veggies and seasoned pepper sauce, that you mix in the bowl in much the same way you mix 비빔밥, of course!)

Fantastic stuff in the summer time.

And, last but not least, we can now read the label on that old favorite from university days, ramyeon (ramen in Anglified Japanese).

ramyeon = 라면 = 라 + 면 = ra + noodles. I dunno what ‘ra’ means, but it’s darn tasty.

Cool, huh?

Now, I won’t pretend that this list is exhaustive, and there are synonyms and other words for some of these things, as well as many, many more ingredients and combinations Just a few tastes from the groaning buffet table. But after studying these building blocks, you should be able to navigate your way through that Korean-language menu on the wall with a little bit more authority.

Good luck!

(If you have any additions or corrections, feel free to leave a comment, below.)