Vegan
Vegan at a Korean restaurant: what to ask about
Most of what determines whether a Korean dish works for vegans is not printed on the menu. Here is what is usually in there, and how to ask about it without an interrogation.
What catches people out
- Anchovy stock and fish sauce
- As above, and both are more common in Korean cooking than any dairy would be.
- Egg
- Bibimbap is usually topped with a fried or raw egg, gimbap usually has a strip of omelette through it, and the pancakes are egg-battered.
- Fish cake (어묵)
- Standard in tteokbokki, in noodle soups and in the side dishes, where it looks like a pale, chewy vegetable.
Usually a good starting point
Excludes egg and dairy as well as meat and fish stock, so it maps closely onto vegan. It also leaves out the five pungent vegetables, including garlic and spring onion.
Wheat noodles in cold ground-soybean broth, eaten in summer. The broth is soybeans and water rather than stock.
What to actually say
One specific question is easier for everyone than three vague ones — for you and for the person answering.
- “Is the broth made with anchovy?”
- “Is there egg in this or on top of it?”
- “Is the kimchi made with fish sauce or salted shrimp?”
What Korean menus don’t print
Nobody is hiding anything. These are foundational ingredients that a Korean kitchen treats the way you treat salt — not an ingredient, a medium. That is exactly why they never appear in a description.
Under most stews, soups and noodle broths, and in the sauce for tteokbokki. It is the base layer of Korean savoury cooking, so a dish of vegetables in broth is frequently built on dried fish.
Kimchi is commonly fermented with one or both. That carries into everything kimchi goes into — kimchi jjigae, kimchi fried rice, kimchi pancake — where it reads as a vegetable.
Many clear soups, the broth of tteokguk, and a great many dishes that read as bean paste and vegetables.
Commercial gochujang is commonly made with wheat flour or malted barley, and most soy sauce is brewed with wheat. Both surprise people who assume chilli paste means chilli.
Bulgogi and galbi marinades, where Korean pear is used as a tenderiser. It is most of the reason the meat tastes faintly sweet.
Recipes vary between restaurants and change without notice, so treat all of this as what to raise with the kitchen rather than a guarantee about any particular dish. The staff always have the final word.
TableSage reads menus using an AI language model, which gets things wrong sometimes.
Know which dishes to ask about.
Photograph the menu and it flags what is worth raising — including the ingredients that are never printed.