Gluten free in South-Korea
When we bought our tickets to South-Korea, I was hopping around like a two-year old, out of sheer excitement. First time travel to Asia! A few minutes later, reality came knocking: what to do about the gluten free diet? It would be all right of course? I mean, they eat rice, but no milk. Right? But soy-sauce everywhere. This contains gluten. Google shows me they eat fried dough. Disgusting. Oh no, I cannot read the list of ingredients on the packaging! And with this last thought, panic kicked in.
Preparation
The most reliable source of information, the almighty internet didn’t tell me much. But I wasn’t afraid, it would be ok. I googled around a bit, read about the experiences of Scott, from Celiac.com. I printed a gluten free diet card from the ever-trusty Celiac Travel and added with the help of Google translate: no soy sauce, no red bean paste and no milk products. Done, and ready to go. No time to worry too much! I did not take any food, since we would often switch hostels and I did not want to haul around too much. I only took some bars for surviving a long plane journey (and actually needed them immediatly, when there was nothing to find at Guangzhou airport.
Seoul
On the first day in Seoul I found out no-one had ever heard of the gluten free diet before. The card left people completely bewildered. Several times, the staff erupted in a loud discussions about my very strange wishes, in which all Korean guests listened in with interest. Yes, how I do love this kind of attention. Twice we were sent on our way because the cook was simply unable to serve me anything. Several days we had to search long and hard before we found a restaurant. This was quite exhausting and also strange to me; Seoul is a metropolis for crying out loud!
Breakfast and lunch
I can be brief about this; I mainly ate bananas for two weeks, since this was readily available and affordable. You can buy them in any small shop like 7-eleven or e-mart24, which you can find on any other corner. Koreans buy seem to buy breakfast and lunch at these places and go out for dinner at night. The small shops are not a good place to find gluten free food, since they sell noodles, potato chips and other pre-packaged foods. Sometimes there are cold, boiled eggs (watch out for soy sauce). If you are okay with dairy products, you can buy yoghurt. I even found it hard to find fruit or nuts in bigger stores. I would have taken gluten free oats I think, if I were to visit South-Korea (possible Japan) again. Maybe also a large bag of nuts.
I did find the website of Carrie (Forthesakeofgluten) and found it interesting to read but decided to only visit the gluten-free bakery Sunnybread Exterior and the Nilk Factory she mentioned. I really wanted to try out Korean food! In hindsight I might have made things easier for myself if we would’ve gone to one of the places on her list…
The food situation
We wanted to see different parts of Seoul, so we changed our location ever few days. This was a little stressful, since we also had to find new places to eat. In the end, I often ate the same meal, either Bibimbap or Korean BBQ.
- Bibimbap (rice, mixed vegetables and egg)
- Korean BBQ (in Korean samgypsal)
You can find Korean BBQ quite easily; just follow you nose. You get you own ‘table’ or better grill and order meat. Be sure to choose samgypsal, pork meat without marinade and make sure to not put any sauce on your meat. Whatever you eat, be sure to ask for no kochujang, a red pepper paste, as not to ruin your meal with sneaky gluten.
