Before the Michelin Guide, 100 Bloggers Mapped Seoul’s Restaurants

The Michelin Guide now makes it easy to find an up-to-date list of the Seoul restaurants it recommends. It is one of several places to start looking for somewhere to eat.

The first Michelin Guide to Seoul was unveiled on November 7, 2016. Korean diners already followed food trends and television regularly featured restaurants. What I found harder to come by was a guide that pulled those places together in a way I could refer to later.

How 100 Bloggers Put Together a Guide

Before Michelin arrived, a hundred bloggers worked together on a book about a hundred places to eat in Seoul.

Each blogger suggested fifty restaurants. From the five thousand nominations, the group voted to choose the hundred with the most support. Food specialists took part as well. The resulting list drew on a wider range of tastes than any one person could have offered.

One Hundred Places to Eat in Seoul

The book gives each place a number, and individual bloggers introduce the restaurants in their own words.

At the back, an index groups the places by neighborhood and occasion. You can look for a family meal or a place to take colleagues out, depending on what you need that day.

The Restaurant I Wrote About

I was one of the hundred contributors. I sent in my fifty suggestions and went back to write about one of the places that made the final selection.

That restaurant was Deoham, a place near Sookmyung Women’s University that served a tidy Korean set meal. I had already been recognized for my blog, but I can see how much I still had to learn about shooting and editing pictures when I look at those photographs now.

When I revisited the list about a decade later, some of the restaurants were gone. By my rough count, around seven in ten were still there. I was struck by how many of the survivors seemed content to do what they had always done.

Michelin and Blue Ribbon now offer more current information. I think of this book as a record of a moment when a group of Korean bloggers tried to build something similar from their own tables and notebooks.

The Seoul Top 100 on Google Maps

Years after publication, I put the addresses on a Google map so they would be easier to find. Some entries mark places that have since closed. Others are still part of the neighborhood.

• Seoul Restaurant Top 100 on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1EjtvVAk-hMHPXythVWEjLv2GfunjE-l6&femb=1

Book Information

Seoul Restaurant Top 100: Recommended by 100 Bloggers

Authors

100 bloggers

Publication date

June 20, 2014

ISBN-13

9791185272047

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