IDA Seosulla-gil
GO ’26Contemporary Korean cooking and natural wine on Seosulla-gil, the quiet craft lane along the Jongmyo shrine wall; a short menu that moves with the season.
A Small Guide to Seoul
서울 · suh-ul · Visited and curated by André
Please find my list of recommendations for a beautiful time in Seoul below.
Eat
Contemporary Korean cooking and natural wine on Seosulla-gil, the quiet craft lane along the Jongmyo shrine wall; a short menu that moves with the season.
Nari’s House Itaewon
GO ’26An old-school pork house going on thirty years; thinly sliced frozen pork belly (naengsam), a paper-ticket queue, worn tables, and a room still mostly locals.
Geumdwaeji Sikdang Sindang-dong
GO ’26Some of the city’s best samgyeopsal, from a premium YBD pig, in tteokbokki territory; no reservations, so put your name on the list mid-morning and wait it out.
Niuroumianguan Jongno
GO ’26Beef noodle soup learned in Shandong, not Taiwan, at communal tables off the Cheonggyecheon; sip the broth plain first, then add the chilli paste, then the suan cai.
Coffee
Cafe Onion Seongsu-dong
GO ’26 ◎Specialty coffee and pastries in a 1970s metal factory left raw, all concrete and steel; afterwards wander Seongsu itself, the warehouse-turned-boutique quarter around it.
Felt Coffee Gwanghwamun
GO ’26A direct-trade specialty roaster with a designer’s eye; carefully sourced beans and a room to match, steps from Gwanghwamun.
Fuga Coffee Gwanghwamun
GO ’26A house-roasting bar on the Gwanghwamun Citywalk; its own beans, serious kit, and a caramel-deep macchiato to sit with.
Look
Leeum Museum of Art Hannam-dong
GO ’26 ◎Samsung’s art museum above Hannam; the traditional wing especially, Mario Botta’s cool galleries climbing floor by floor through Goryeo celadon, Joseon white porcelain and buncheong ware, several of them national treasures.
Deoksugung Jeong-dong
GO ’26A palace by City Hall where hanok halls sit beside Western neoclassical ones; even just the loop around it, along the old stone wall, is the point.
Bukchon Hanok Village Bukchon
GO ’26Tiled hanok roofs stepping up the hill between two palaces, and people still living under them; the postcard lanes of Bukchon-ro 11-gil open to visitors only from 10 to 5, so go early and quietly.
Seoul Museum of Craft Art Anguk-dong
GO ’26Korea’s first public craft museum, set in the five renovated buildings of a former girls’ high school at the foot of Bukchon; free to walk in, and a good reason to slow down between palaces.
Architecture
Hyundai Card Libraries across the city
GO ’26Hyundai Card’s four libraries as design objects: Design in a Bukchon hanok, Music in Itaewon, Travel and Cooking in Gangnam; members’ spaces, so you need a cardholder to get in, but built with real seriousness.
Dongdaemun Design Plaza Dongdaemun
GO ’26Zaha Hadid’s aluminium wave set down in the Dongdaemun market grid; go for the building itself, though it can read more as an exhibit of its own curves than a place, and empties toward a ghost town off-hours.
Shop
Common Ground Konkuk University
GO ’26A mall built from two hundred bright-blue shipping containers by Konkuk University; some fifty young Korean fashion and lifestyle labels stacked three storeys up.
A small ritual
The high and low of Yongsan Namsan → the Han
GO ’26Yongsan in one arc of views: N Seoul Tower on Namsan above, Haebangchon spilling down the slope, and Nodeul Island out on the Han; a district that keeps handing you the city.