[Seoul - Sadang] Soonnam Siraegi - homestyle Korean food and BANCHAN BUFFET (순남시래기) - Best place to eat alone in Seoul

Soonnam Siraegi is one of my favorite places to eat as a solo diner in Korea. It's hard to find a place where you can eat alone and not be too judged and this place fits the bill.

It's really simple homestyle food. Honestly, I probably could make it myself, but then I wouldn't be able to get unlimited banchan at the banchan buffet!

This is a sampling of some of the more common banchan (Korean side dishes) at the buffet. There's usually black beans, japchae (honestly, it's on all the Korean restaurant menus in America, but it's SO hard to find at a restaurant in Korea because it's special occasion food), seasoned bean sprouts, acorn jelly, and some greens.

This is usually my go-to. I usually just get the siraegi guk. I'm actually not sure what siraegi means in English. It's really creamy, but it's actually vegan/vegetarian. It's quite hard to find vegan food in Korea because there's always shrimp paste or fish sauce snuck in there somewhere, but I asked and this is definitely vegetarian (anchovy broth is used).

I don't have a good picture of it, but they also provide small bowls of kimchi, spicy squid, and some other greens.

This particular night, I was not alone. We also got some makeolli (Korean rice wine). We got the noeul gooreum (sunset clouds) makeolli that night - it has bokbunja (Korean raspberry), omija, and raspberries in it.

It's very creamy and savory. It's made with ddeulgae paste, which is a creamy savory paste made from the seeds of the perilla plant (ggaetip - the kind of spicy (?) leaf that comes with your lettuce at Korean bbq). It's also topped with sesame oil.

Here are the menus. They were releasing some new dishes.

So, I just realized that literally none of the menu is in English...and there's not enough room on the page to type in translations. I'm going to try...I'm so sorry it looks so messy (click to enlarge). Leave a comment below if you need me to type out more explanations.

Location: Various locations around Seoul

If you want to know where the nearest one is to your location, either email me (eatstretchexplore@gmail.com) or leave a comment below!

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