The food during my trip to North Korea is a topic I didn’t want to touch with a 10 foot pole, because as we all know the DPRK is a terribly poor country and it was struck by famine for several years in the 1990s. But I know that a lot of you are very much interested in what visitors to North Korea eat… and where… and when…
Since trips to North Korea are group tours pretty much everything is included in a total price. We always had breakfast at the respective hotels we stayed at – buffet at the *Yanggakdo Hotel*, set menu at the Dragon River Hot Spa Hotel in Nampo and the Minsok Hotel in Kaesong. Lunch usually was at restaurants run by KITC (which means that usually we didn’t eat with locals), dinner was either at the hotels or at restaurants. Lunch and dinner included water and one beer per person, additional alcohol was available at a ridiculously low price – I think 50 cents per bottle.
The Korean guides usually had their own table, not because they got different food, but because it was a chance for them to get away from the group and be amongst themselves. Tour guides work long hours, so they definitely deserved it!
Breakfast at the Yanggakdo Hotel was pretty good – usually some bread / buns, sweet doughy things (like donuts), pickles, kimchi, fried eggs, stewed meat (chicken, pork), battered fried fish, fried potatoes and veggies. Simple, but delicious. (Breakfast at the other two hotels was a lot more simple, which is understandable since they had a lot less customers…)
Lunch was always amazing! Usually we sat on a long table were groups of four people shared about 8 to 10 dishes. Kimchi, fried eggs, stewed meat, broiled / fried fish, sweet and sour tofu – similar to the breakfast, but way better quality. Again: simple, but extremely delicious. Since there are a lot of Koreans living in Japan I had all kinds of kimchi before, hot and cold, and I never was a big fan of it – but the kimchi we had at the KITC restaurant in Pyongyang was amazing, the best kimchi I ever had!
One day we were able to choose one of the main dishes, either bibimbap or naengmyeon. Bibimbap is one of the most famous Korean dishes (mixed rice, including vegetables, meats, eggs and several spices) and since I had it before I went with naengmyeon, cold noodles in a broth Pyongyang is famous for. Living in Japan I am very familiar with soba and udon (two Japanese kinds of noodles than can be eaten hot or cold) and so I was very curious about naengmyeon – and the guides were quite interested in my opinion. To be honest with you, if prefer udon over soba over naengmyeon at any day, but for the sake of understanding among nations I called it a draw – actually making our guide more interested in Japanese food. (I brought some sweets and shared them during the trip with fellow travelers, guides and locals.)
Another lunch highlight was the lamb BBQ in a Pyongyang park. Of course we had our own tables, but local groups were having picnics at identical tables, too, so it wasn’t completely out of the ordinary what we did there. Sunny day, great food, locals – a nice break from “foreigners looking at things”…
The lunch our guides were most proud of was pansanggi we had in Kaesong. Pansanggi consists of about a dozen small brass bowls filled with… well… vegetables, fried fish, pickles, tofu, meat, … It originated among Korean royalty, who realized that variety is the spice of life and rather had small portions of many dishes than big portions of a single dish. And since they had the resources to afford it… The preparation was amazing, for example this was some of the best tofu I ever ate – and of course the presentation added to the experience, too.
Dinner usually was kimchi, fried eggs, stewed meat, pickles, broiled / fried fish, tofu… lots of variations, so hardly any of us got sick of it over the course of the eight days we spent in the DPRK; but it was all Korean food, so people used to not only eating a different dish, but a different cuisine every day might have a tough time in North Korea. One evening we had the opportunity to visit Pyongyang’s only pizza restaurant with authentic Italian equipment and staff trained on location, but I bowed out and had dinner at the Yanggakdo Hotel. When in Rome, do as the Romans do… and eat pizza – but when in Pyongyang I prefer to have Korean food!
In Nampo we had a local specialty before the dinner – the petrol clam BBQ. And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. You arrange dozens of claims on a flat stone, soak them with two 500ml plastic bottles of petrol and light them on fire! Since the Nampo clams don’t open up when cooked that way, most of the gasoline actually burns into thin air. Nevertheless about 1 in 4 clams taste of petrol according to our guide Sarah. (I’ve tried only one since I had a weak stomach that day – more about that later…) But since “better safe than sorry” is valid all over the world our guides treated us with two bottles of soju (sweetened rice liquor) and two bottles of Pyongyang Vodka (beyond 50% alcoholic content…). I was tempted to ask for a bottle of Victory Gin, but I bit my tongue last second. 🙂
By the way – the standard farewell meal on the last night is at a duck restaurant in Pyongyang. When we went there the place was packed (with foreigners…) and the food was amazing! Four plates of meat, two plates of veggies and a grill in the middle. Heaven!
What else is there to say?
Oh, pretty much every meal came with a soup and rice – and the rice was usually one of the last dishes. Why? Because our hosts didn’t want us to give the impression that they would fill us with rice so they wouldn’t have to give us much meat, eggs and vegetables. A sweet gesture, but I don’t think anybody would have complained to get the rice along with the meats and vegetables; but I’ve heard it’s custom in other countries, too, for example at Chinese weddings.
If you want to visit North Korea, but you can’t stand the idea of eating fish, meat and shellfish with every meal there is good news: a vegetarian option is available, but no kosher or halal one.
And that’s it for food in North Korea… for now. (*But don’t miss the article about Korean Dog Soup!*)
(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)
Interesting. Great photos.
Thanks, much appreciated!
That’s a great food overview.
Thanks! I am not much of a food photographer, so I just took a snapshot here and there, but I guess not a lot of people write much about their food experience in North Korea – which is disappointing, because everybody, at least in my group, loved the food there!
A very good account. Perhaps not to everyone’s tastes, but you would visit North Korea with a serious sense of adventure.
Yeah, like with almost every aspect of trip to North Korea you have to know what you are getting into and then go with the flow. Easy in my case since I like Asian food in general, but North Korea did what Korean restaurants in Japan couldn’t – make me really like Korean food!
man, you made my mouth water! i always thought kimchi was a spicy type of fermented cabbage; a korean version of sauerkraut, but hot to the palate? is this correct? i need to try some, but i am sure it won’t be as freshly homemade as what you received. i love these posts, they are a glimpse into the real n.korea, something we don’t often get to see
Yeah, usually kimchi is fermented (napa) cabbage, but it tastes nothing like sauerkraut thanks to almost completely different ingredients. If you can get some in your area try the best quality available – whenever I eat the low end version of a dish I have never eaten before I regret it. You might like the low end version if you like the high quality version – but it’s unlikely the other way round. (I hated sushi the first time I tried it, now I eat it (or variants like onigiri) several times a week…)
BTW: I am not sure if my observations really are the real North Korea. They most likely actually are not – as so often the truth lies somewhere in-between, if there is a universal truth at all in this case. What I write is very subjective, but at least it is based on real experiences…
Thanks for the informative posts .
It’s my pleasure.
Would love to try the petrol clams. Sounds interesting. Wonder why they do that? You’re right about serving rice/noodles as one of the last courses in Chinese weddings 🙂
Yeah, but I wonder why some chefs use molecular gastronomy… probably because they can? I guess nobody dared to ask about the tradition after Sarah told us the story that a tourist once asked since when petrol clams are a local delicacy and he got the answer “Since tourists showed up!”. It’s really strange though, given that the DPRK has serious trouble to get their hands on combustibles in general. You should think they wouldn’t waste them on cooking clams…
(Thanks for confirming the rice / noodles thing. I’ve never been to a Chinese wedding myself…)
I suppose it’s meant as a novelty for tourists… 🙂
Given the way Sarah told the story I doubt it… Maybe it’s from the time of the Japanese occupation?
Oh that makes sense….