After eating Korean food for a few years now I can definitely say I am a kimchi convert – Joel even more so! So we were pretty stoked to discover that the Seoul Kimchi Festival was on while we were here.

Kimchi is probably one of the most well-known Korean foods (along with fried chicken) and is served with pretty much everything. Basically it’s a pickled and (sometimes, but not always) fermented side dish, usually made with cabbage but as we saw in the “kimchi museum” Koreans will kimchi anything, and with differing extras added – chili powder, garlic, shrimp, etc. Taste varies a lot too – I used to think of kimchi as just spicy/sour cabbage but there’s so much more to it!

Kimchi is a pretty big deal in Korea, so I’m not sure why I was surprised to find such a big festival set up. Unfortunately our timing wasn’t great so while we did get to taste-test lots of kimchi (and pear and makgeolli!) and checked out the “kimchi museum”, we missed what seemed to be a mass kimchi-making session. We caught the aftermath though, which was guys packing and stacking hundreds of boxes of kimchi.

I also was happy to discover just behind the big blowup “kimchi museum” the Seoul Metropolitan Library! We quickly popped in to use the bathroom and the wifi, but the quick look I had was pretty cool!