It probably sounds obscure to write specifically about dining in open air in seoul, but when I conducted my own research prior to the trip it was challenging for me to find out what are the options available since most of the data is actually in korean and google maps are not widely used. I thought I’ll publish this post for the occasional internet stranger who may need this obscure information like me.
why eat in open air
We have no desire to get infected again with an airborne virus that causes (invisible) systemic damage to our bodies. We do dine the very rare occasion indoors if the restaurant seems empty, the ventilation seems great, and the CO2 reading is under 700. It is still an uncomfortable risk we are trying not to take as the virus is known to linger in the air even in an empty air-conditioned restaurant. But I am only human and I love eating, so I do get tempted a lot.
There are cases of outdoor transmission so the risk is not zero. But it is substantially lower. I guess this is a level of risk we are willing to bear for now?
It is difficult not to compare our level of precautions to almost everyone else going maskless everywhere, dining everywhere, meeting everybody, and they seem fine. But that will not mean anything or comfort me if I get reinfected and have to go through the arduous journey of recovering again. If I even recover. My heart rate and fitness is not back to pre-infection, 4 months later and counting.
on missing out
Eating outdoors means we miss out a lot of the good food of course, a ton of restaurants mentioned in the michelin guides or are heavily recommended are all packed indoor restaurants with snaking queues. But we are choosing to focus on the overall travel experience and take what we can when it comes to food.
weather matters with convertible restaurants
I think we were also slightly unlucky in terms of weather. It seems many of the restaurants have dining areas with full-length doors or massive windows that can be quickly converted to open-air, but they are only active during cool weather. I found a dakgalbi restaurant on google that showed an alfresco area in the photos but when we got there it was fully covered with thick plastic sheets. Sometimes we will pass by restaurants that will open their full length glass doors only late in the evening when the weather gets cooler. I assume all of them would be fully shut in winter. So with this new knowledge, I would plan a trip during spring and autumn. However with climate change your mileage may vary. September weather is supposed to hover around 25 degrees celsius, but it was around 30 when we were there.
using map navigation apps
Some places don’t have a location on google maps so they are supplemented with links on naver maps. I downloaded naver maps on the singapore app store so the interface is automatically in english. However, apart from user-interface labels, everything else is in korean. There is also no filter options by opening hours as far as I know. But if you search a store name in english, it may still turn up. Sometimes I have to copy the address on the corresponding google listing if available and paste it into naver in order to get navigation instructions. Google maps is basically useless for walking and inferior for public transport.
ride hailing apps
I used uber (named UT in korea) to hail taxis – private cars are not allowed – they charge by the meter. They seem cheaper compared to singapore? Traffic is mostly horrendous though. It could take 50 minutes for a 8km journey from dongdaemun to gangnam. But we took it occasionally to move accommodation. You could use kakao taxi and pay the driver in person as the app doesn’t accept international credit cards (google for instructions) but I stuck to UT since it worked with my singaporean credit card without issues.
payment
From my online research I read that Seoul seems to be still cash heavy, so we took a considerable amount of cash. When we got there however, most restaurants/cafes/shops accept credit cards. Only street food and market vendors accept cash, and you would need to charge your public transit card with cash. Convenience stores accept apple pay, whereas all other shops were a hit and miss. Towards the end I realised terminals with an apple pay logo did work, but they were finicky in terms of the contact needed with the watch or phone. They seem less reactive or were slower or more vague to give feedback whether the contact was successful.
ordering
Some places have a ordering terminal with english options (look for the corresponding flag before you order, it is usually on the “home” screen at the corners. I can’t remember if it was american or british.). One-third the time we had to use google translate, which often doesn’t translate well so we had to use guess work. Sometimes there is a hidden english menu you have to ask for, but they may not understand still so you may have to do some pointing to the corresponding korean text.
what about the flight itself
We wore 3m n95 aura masks with sip masks installed and drank fresh milk on the plane while everyone else enjoyed their nice-smelling fancy airplane food. Sad, I know. But I think it was worth it. At least I can keep my sense of smell.
where we ate
korean bbq
I asked on the internet if there were outdoor dining options in seoul for specifically korean food as based on my own search there were only options for non-korean food. Some people were snarky in their replies, a kind soul did take the effort to direct me to a very specific area near Ikseondong. Because of timing and logistics we didn’t dine there but we did pass by the area and there were indeed a plethora of outdoor bbq restaurants:
We did dine at a kbbq restaurant at sejong food street with an outdoor sitting area.
korean fried chicken
This is my partner’s favourite food, so we were both glad that right in myeongdong there is a BHC branch that has outdoor seating. Along that street there are also some other restaurants with outdoor seating, selling mostly beer and chicken.
army stew
We really wanted to try army stew but it seemed impossible to find a restaurant serving army stew with outdoor sitting. Thanks to my partner’s patient-browsing naver skills, we found one in hongdae.
Hongdae Young Pollack Pocha Hongnopo 홍대 노가리 포차 홍노포
naver maps / approximate location on google
korean ginseng chicken soup
Baecnyun Ginseng Chicken Soup
There seems to be another more popular branch with outdoor seating too, but we settled on this branch because it seemed quieter and had giant full-length windows that were open.
korean street food
There is an entire street at popular tourist area myeongdong that opens around 4pm with plenty of street food stalls. But you can find tteokbokki stalls around everywhere.
markets
There are many markets in Seoul – the most popular one of all is Gwangjang market. They are technically open-air, but they can be packed and I am not sure how well-ventilated once you walk deep into the market. We did dine at one stall because it was right at the entrance.
We took some food to-go and ate them at the exits. Another market we enjoyed was Mangwon, where we had grilled pork patties (tteokgalbi), and some oden and tempura.
pub food
For some reason it seems quite common for indoor pubs to open their windows fully, creating adequate ventilation. We would request to sit right by the windows, and would leave if we were not allowed to do so. Pub food is relatively more expensive (20-30k per dish) compared to regular restaurant food. I wouldn’t recommend pub food if you’re dining solo because they tend to come in large portions for at least 2 people.
Suji Story Gangnam
No english menu on their ordering terminal, but wait staff was very helpful. We ended up with a grilled cubed rib eye dish that was quite delicious. My partner likes to order stuff that says “best” on the menu.
mowmow 모모의기묘한모험
Has an english menu if you ask for it.
fusion food
익선동 121
naver maps
We stumbled upon this while at ikseondong. When we were there they opened their full-length doors to the side so it was as good as an open-air restaurant. They serve interesting food like squid-ink tonkatsu which my partner had, but I was so glad I got to eat a “normal” meal: beef bulgogi with soy bean paste soup. It was really difficult to find “standard” korean food with alfresco sitting.
cafe hollywood
Really large portions, location is quite obscure near ehwa women’s university. But the area surrounding it –Sinchon – about 10-15 minutes walk away is rather interesting. It has an emart and daiso worth checking out. We took a bus from hongdae so it didn’t feel particularly far.
cafes & bakeries
There were surprisingly plenty of cafes and bakeries with outdoor sitting. They just don’t turn up on a google search. Most of them are around the bukchon/ikseondong area, yeonnamdong area and the seoul forest area. Most of the cafes serve pastries, but some serve brunch food.
dotori garden
Opens early at 8am, plenty of outdoor seats, serves fancy pastries and also greek yoghurt.
cafe onion anguk
Don’t attempt to dine here unless you’re willing to queue for an hour or two or get there at 7am. The pastries are all displayed out in the open (seems like a seoul thing) without any covering, so hygiene may be a concern. But it is housed in a beautiful hanok, the pastries are creative, and there is plenty of outdoor seating especially if you don’t mind skipping the hanok experience.
Other cafes with outdoor seating we’ve personally been to:
- Fritz Coffee Company Dohwa ample sitting options at the ground floor and also there is a second-story terrace. Supposedly one of the best coffee in Seoul. Serves strange looking croissants. Has a little of a “Spirited Away” feeling indoors with a dark interior and colourful lanterns.
- Fritz Coffee Company Wonseo Same as above, but housed outside a museum near Bukchon village. In a hanok-style building.
- Open One Bakery Cafe Lots of open-air sitting, dour interior, questionable service, but good pastries. Opens early at 8am. Recommend the garlic cream bread and mugwort cream latte.
- Layered Yeonnam Has a terrace and some ground floor outdoor sitting. British vibe (not sure what’s with that). Has a ton of cakes and scones. We like the pretzel scone with butter.
- Offer Bakery Cafe Our first cafe in hongdae. Has a small open-air area that is in the cafe. Drinks and pastries not very memorable.
- Thanks, Oat Yeonnam Actually has some open-air sitting but we decided to take it away to Gyeongui Line Forest Park. We really, really like the greek yoghurt here. It has this ice-cream-like frozen texture. We had the “nuts fantasy” version and another that is blueberry with cheese.
- Anthracite Coffee Seogyo Very beautiful building and grounds, like a zen garden. Has fancy coffee that is carefully weighted if that is your sort of thing.
- Crestown Coffee Stumbled upon this in gangnam. Ample outdoor sitting on cute crates.
- E-chae Cafe In a hanok-style building at Bukchon village.
- Grandpa Factory Cafe Big warehouse-like structure with a treehouse and a ton of outdoor sitting. Serves brunch food too. Around the seongsudong cafe street.
- bimbom Brunch cafe with a terrace with a pretty green view. At the seoul forest area.
- Lot’s O Bagels Pretty outdoor sitting area. I am not sure what is with koreans and bagels (we also had the famous London Bagel Museum which we took out – please try the green onion bagel) but we hardly have bagels in singapore so we were happy to eat some bagels here. Opens early enough if you want some breakfast in the Apgujeong area.
toast kiosks
We tried both eggdrop and isaac toasts. They have branches everywhere. We preferred eggdrop. They both don’t usually have outdoor seating, but we sat on a kerb outside and ate, like whatever. Eggdrop also charges 100 won extra to takeaway for the extra packaging, so the second time we simply ordered dine-in and took the tray outside. They didn’t seem to mind.
red tents
we passed by these red tents multiple times and they seem like a good outdoor option, but we didn’t have the opportunity or the courage to dine at them because of the language barrier.
Things we awkwardly ate outside the restaurant or in a park
There were some food we wanted to try but they have no open-air options, so we asked to eat it outside the restaurant (bingsu/shaved ice), took it out to the park (nudake matcha pastry: it is overrated and expensive imo), or took it out only to eat outside the restaurant (keto gimbap, highly recommended but there is no english menu).
conclusion
Would we do it again? Definitely. I do still wish we could have eaten indoors and covid was just a very long dark dream I had. But given the circumstances I am glad we still got to try a lot of food. It made us more creative and resourceful. We also ate at places we wouldn’t have normally eaten – like pub food – and I like having a wide array of experiences.
We did meet some confused or unfriendly restaurant staff who rejected our requests to sit near the windows or in an unmanned area, but we face the same in Singapore. Just without the language barrier.
Pre-trip with my research I thought it would be difficult to find places to eat at, but I am glad that reality was a lot better in-person. We could totally survive with takeouts or street food, but it was really nice to hang out in a cafe and do some art. Cafes and pastries in seoul are really on another level.
I still hope for a true sterilising vaccine one day though.