How to Order in a Korean Restaurant

Ordering in a Korean restaurant is easy once you know four things, and mildly stressful until you do. None of them are hard; they are just different enough from European or North American convention that the first attempt tends to go sideways.

Here they are, in the order you will meet them.

1. You call the server. They do not come to you.

This is the big one. Korean restaurant service is efficient and reactive rather than attentive: nobody circles the room asking whether everything is fine. If you wait to be noticed, you will wait a long time and conclude the service is bad, when in fact you simply never asked.

Two ways to call:

• Say "jeogiyo" (저기요) — literally "over there", functionally "excuse me". Say it at conversational volume across the room. This is normal and not rude.
• Press the table button. Many restaurants have a call button on each table. Press it once.

Once you accept this, service in Korea is noticeably faster than most places. Food arrives quickly, water is self-serve at a station, and nobody interrupts your meal.

2. The side dishes are free

Your food arrives surrounded by small dishes — kimchi, pickled radish, seasoned vegetables, sometimes eight or ten of them. These are banchan, they come with the meal, and they are free.

More than that: refills are free. If you finish the kimchi and want more, ask. This is expected and costs nothing.

Two things follow. First, do not treat banchan as a starter course to be cleared before the main — they are eaten alongside. Second, do not over-order the main dishes on the assumption that the small plates are all there is; the total volume of food is usually more than it looks.

3. Some dishes require two people

A large part of the Korean menu is built around shared cooking — barbecue grilled at the table, stews bubbling in a communal pot. Because of how these are portioned and cooked, many carry a two-portion minimum.

This catches solo diners out. Menus will often mark it, sometimes only in Korean (2인분 이상 means "two portions or more").

Solo dining has become far more normal in Korea over the past decade, and many restaurants now serve single portions of dishes that once required a pair. But the minimum still exists, particularly at barbecue restaurants, and it is better to check the menu than to be turned away at the table.

4. You pay at the counter, and you do not tip

At the end of the meal you take the bill — usually left on your table when the food arrives — to the counter by the door. You do not wait for a card machine to be brought over.

Tipping is not practised in Korea. Not for restaurants, not for taxis, not for hotels. Prices are the prices. Leaving money on the table can genuinely confuse staff, and someone may follow you outside to return it.

The table

• Metal chopsticks and a long spoon. The spoon is for rice and soup; using chopsticks for rice is possible but not the convention.
• Water is self-serve. There is a station with cups and a dispenser. Nobody will bring it to you.
• Scissors appear at barbecue and noodle restaurants and are used to cut meat or noodles at the table. This is normal, not a novelty.
• Shared dishes are eaten from directly. Stews and grilled meat come in a communal vessel and everyone eats from it, sometimes with a personal bowl for the portion they take.

Ordering without Korean

Point. Menus with photographs are common, and pointing at the picture or the item is entirely acceptable.

Numbers. Holding up fingers works. So does saying "two" while pointing.

Useful phrases, none of which require good pronunciation to work:

That last one is not required, and it is noticed. It is the single highest-return phrase to learn.

A few things that will happen

You will be given more food than you ordered. Banchan, sometimes a complimentary soup, occasionally something the owner decided you should try.

Someone may adjust your grill. At barbecue restaurants staff often take over the cooking, turning and cutting the meat. This is service, not criticism.

It will be faster than you expect. Food arrives within minutes. Korean restaurant meals are not lingering affairs by default, and at busy times a queue outside is a gentle signal.

For the wider set of social conventions around meals and elsewhere, see Korean etiquette mistakes foreigners make. And if you want a cheap, low-stakes place to start eating here, convenience store food is a genuinely good entry point.

Tourism guidance in English is published by the Korea Tourism Organization.

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Written August 2026. Restaurant conventions vary by region and by establishment. Corrections welcome via contact.