Temple food and Buddhist vegetarian dining in Korea
What Korean temple food is
Korean temple food is the cooking of Buddhist monasteries, shaped by a practice of eating simply and without harming animals. It leaves out meat, fish, and other animal ingredients, with dairy as the usual exception, and it builds flavour instead from mushrooms, kelp, perilla seeds, fermented soybean pastes, and seasonal vegetables and wild greens.
What sets it apart from ordinary vegetarian cooking is a second rule about a group of strongly flavoured plants known as the five pungent vegetables. They are left out because they are believed to stir the mind and get in the way of meditation, and for many visitors this is the part of the diet that is hardest to keep outside a temple.
How strictly a person follows these rules varies. Some keep them only on certain days, some keep them fully, and practice differs between traditions and between temples. This page does not decide what counts as correct. It explains where the common problems are in Korean cooking and how to ask about them, so that you can keep your own standard.
The five pungent vegetables
In the Korean tradition the five pungent vegetables are garlic, green onion, garlic chives, wild chives, and a plant known in English as Chinese squill. Garlic and green onion are the ones that matter most in practice, because they appear in a large share of everyday Korean dishes. Garlic chives and wild chives show up in pancakes, dumplings, side dishes, and seasoned sauces.
Onion is not one of the traditional five, but it belongs to the same family of plants and some people who follow this diet leave it out as well. The Buddhist vegetarian card on this site asks the kitchen to leave out onion along with the other pungent vegetables, so that the request is clear even to staff who are not familiar with the tradition.
Egg is another point where practice differs. Temple food leaves it out, while dairy is usually accepted, and the card on this site asks for no egg. If you eat dairy but not egg, or neither, it is worth saying so directly, because staff may otherwise treat the two the same way.
Where garlic and green onion hide in Korean cooking
Minced garlic and chopped green onion are part of the basic seasoning of Korean cooking. They go into the marinades for grilled meat, into seasoned vegetable side dishes, into stir fried rice cakes and noodles, into the sauces spooned over tofu, and into most soups and stews, often added at the end as a garnish that is easy to miss.
Kimchi is the next place to look. Ordinary cabbage and radish kimchi is usually made with a paste that includes garlic and green onion, alongside salted seafood or fish sauce, so a plate of kimchi on the table is rarely suitable. Kimchi made without them exists, most reliably at temple food restaurants, but it has to be asked for.
Dipping sauces and the soy sauce seasoning served with pancakes and dumplings often contain chopped green onion or garlic too. Because these are served on the side, it is sometimes possible to leave them out or ask for plain soy sauce instead, which is an easier request than changing how a dish is cooked.
Why a vegan dish is not always enough
A dish that is made without any animal ingredient can still be full of garlic and green onion. Plant based restaurants and vegan menus in Korea usually follow the ordinary style of seasoning, so a vegan bibimbap, a vegetable pancake, or a plate of seasoned greens may all contain the pungent vegetables even when everything else about them fits your diet.
The same is true of dishes that staff describe as vegetable dishes. The request that a kitchen understands most easily is usually no meat, and it may not occur to the staff that garlic or green onion could matter. Naming these vegetables one by one, as the card does, is what makes the difference.
Temple food restaurants and the kitchens of temples themselves are the places where the pungent vegetables are left out by default. Outside them, it is better to assume that a dish contains garlic and green onion until the staff tell you otherwise.
Asking in an ordinary restaurant
The order card on this site can carry your request in Korean. Open the diet selector at the top of the card tool and choose Buddhist vegetarian, and the card asks the kitchen not to use meat, fish, seafood, egg, anchovy or meat broth, salted seafood, fish sauce, garlic, onion, green onion, garlic chives, or wild chives, and says that you cannot eat kimchi made with salted seafood or fish sauce.
Show the card before you order and give the staff time to read it. Many dishes cannot be changed, because the garlic and green onion are already in a sauce or a broth that was prepared earlier in the day, so the most useful answer is often a list of the few dishes that can be made for you. Plain rice, steamed or grilled vegetables seasoned only with salt, and tofu without sauce are common places to start.
If the staff seem unsure, choose something else rather than asking them to guess. Checking the dish again when it arrives, and looking for green onion scattered on top, catches the most common mistake.
Where to try temple food
The Korea Tourism Organization publishes an English introduction to temple food on its official website. Temple food restaurants in Seoul and other cities serve set meals in the monastic style, and they are the easiest places to eat without pungent vegetables, although it is still worth confirming the details of your own diet with the staff.
The Korean Temple Food Center in Seoul is run by the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism and offers exhibitions, hands-on experiences, and cooking classes in the temple style. Many temples also run Templestay programmes, from a short visit of a few hours to overnight stays, and meals during a stay follow the temple kitchen.
Programmes, opening days, and booking rules change, so check the current information from these organizations before you go rather than relying on an older listing. When you book, mentioning your diet in advance gives the kitchen time to prepare.