Seoul Food DC: What’s Vegetarian Editorial Review

Seoul Food DC serves Korean comfort food in Takoma Park. Most of it is vegan by design, not by accident. Chef Anna Goree built the menu around plant-based versions of the dishes she grew up eating. A “Korean fried chicken” that’s plant-based front to back. A cauliflower-and-cashew take on sweet and sour chicken. A couple of dishes do carry real chicken. Everything else on the board is vegan or vegetarian, and it’s marked that way on the menu. You don’t have to guess.

What’s vegan here

Count the small plates list. Scallion pancake, kimchi pancake, wild rice mushroom porridge, tteokbokki, cauliflower japchae, vegan croquettes, Jeju buns, spicy chickpea buns, cabbage dumplings, grandma’s dumplings, avocado quesadilla. All vegan. All priced $8 to $18. Two dishes carry real meat: a firecracker chicken quesadilla and a kids’ bibimbap with a chicken option. Both are clearly marked too. No ambiguity to sort out at the table.

Small plates are just one section. The full menu also runs Rice Bowls, Sandwiches, Noodles, a rotating Specialties list, and desserts, plus an “SF Market” section for grocery items to take home. The same pattern holds across all of it: vegan or vegetarian called out, meat called out.

What to order

Start with the Korean fried “chicken” app. Plant-based despite the name, and it gets the most repeat orders for a reason: crisp exterior, sauce that actually clings instead of pooling at the bottom of the box. The Cauliflower Cashew “Chicken” plays the same trick with a different sauce. Want something less meat-adjacent? Try the Grandma’s Dumplings, or the Bun Sampler, an $18 way to sample several stuffed bun flavors at once. Both show off what this kitchen does with dough. For something that reads like real Korean home cooking rather than a fusion swing, order the wild rice mushroom porridge. It happens to be gluten-free too.

The kitchen situation

A handful of items carry a specific gluten-free tag. The scallion pancake has a GF version. So do the wild rice porridge, the tteokguk rice cake soup, the potato buns, the avocado salad, and the cabbage dumplings. That’s specific, not a blanket gluten-free-friendly claim stamped on the whole menu. The firecracker chicken quesadilla is the one place real meat and the rest of the kitchen meet. If cross-contact matters to you, ask before you order.

Practical notes

Small plates run $8 to $18. Most land at $15 to $16, so two or three dishes make a real dinner, usually $35 to $40 a person. Hours are limited: Wednesday through Saturday, noon to 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Closed Sunday through Tuesday. Call ahead at (571) 236-4750 if you’re planning around those windows. A small kitchen on a four-day schedule fills up fast. Delivery and pickup both run through the restaurant’s own ordering site and Uber Eats, if you’d rather skip the wait entirely.

Most restaurants that serve a plant-based “chicken” treat it as a consolation prize. This one treats it as the headline, and tucks the real chicken quesadilla into the footnotes instead.