Table Notes: a restaurant owner's short notes from Korean restaurants

I run four restaurants in Seoul — a 24-hour Korean beef soup house in Gangnam among them. When I eat out, I notice things a customer usually doesn't: how the broth is held, when the rice was cooked, whether the line moves because the kitchen is fast or because the menu is short.

This blog is the short version of those notes. Each post is one visit: where and when, what I ordered, what it cost, the one thing an owner notices, and a tip if you are visiting Korea for the first time. No stars, no scores. Restaurants are not told in advance and cannot buy a note.

The full notes — with the Korean name card you can show at the counter, the map, and versions in Korean, Japanese and Thai — live on my guide site: koreaplate.com/notes

The site itself is a free guide to 121 restaurants across Korea, with prices, hours and what to order, written for people eating here for the first time. Start here: koreaplate.com · what things cost · open late and 24 hours

— Harrison Hong