Korean Temple Food: What Monks Eat and Where to Try It

Korean food without garlic sounds like a contradiction. It is also how Buddhist monks and nuns in Korea have eaten for well over a thousand years.

사찰음식 (sachal eumsik), temple food, is not a restaurant genre that happens to be vegetarian. It is the everyday food of a religious community, built around a rule against killing, a rule against strong flavours, and a rule against waste. In 2025 the government recognised it as National Intangible Heritage. Netflix got there first.

This is Part 2 of our Faith in Korea series.

What makes temple food different from ordinary vegetarian food?

Two things: the ban on the five pungent vegetables, and the way it is eaten. A dish can be completely plant-based and still not be temple food if it is full of garlic.

The Jogye Order, Korea’s largest Buddhist order, explains the rules on its official temple food site. Animal foods are excluded because Buddhist scripture teaches that eating meat “cuts off the seed of compassion”. The 오신채 (osinchae), the five pungent vegetables, are excluded because their effect on the body is said to disturb meditation, and because even a small craving for strong flavour is an attachment.

🧄 The five pungent vegetables temple kitchens never use

One detail surprises people: the official definition excludes “all animal foods except dairy”. Korean temple food is vegan in almost every dish you will meet, but dairy is not formally banned. If you are strictly vegan, ask.

Flavour comes from elsewhere. Temple kitchens build depth with long-aged soy sauce, soybean paste and chilli paste, and with natural seasonings the Jogye Order lists by name: mushroom powder, kelp powder, 제피 (jepi, Korean pepper), perilla seed powder and raw soybean powder. Food is seasonal and local, and the Order stresses that nothing should be left over.

What is baru gongyang, the monks' formal meal?

발우공양 (baru gongyang) is the ritual meal eaten from a nested set of wooden bowls. It is the part of temple food that is less about cooking and more about practice.

Each monk has a set of four bowls that stack into one: the largest for rice, then soup, then side dishes, and one for clean water. Some sets have a fifth, smallest bowl for offerings, though it is rarely used. The meal is eaten in silence, in a fixed order, and everyone takes only what they will finish. At the end, a piece of kimchi is used to scrub each bowl with a little water, then eaten, and the water is drunk. Nothing is thrown away.

The Order sums up the meaning in five words: equality (everyone eats the same food), cleanliness, frugality, community, and gratitude to everyone whose labour produced the meal. If you do a templestay, you will usually be taught the basics of this meal, and it is harder than it looks.

Who made temple food famous?

A nun in a hermitage and a streaming service.

Jeong Kwan, a Seon nun at Cheonjinam hermitage at Baegyangsa temple in South Jeolla, was featured in the third season of Netflix’s Chef’s Table in 2017. She has no restaurant and no formal culinary training; she cooks for her community and for guests. Her episode introduced Korean temple food to a global audience of chefs, and she has been credited with influencing Mingoo Kang of Mingles, now Seoul’s only three-Michelin-star restaurant, and René Redzepi of Noma.

In Korea, Seonjae Sunim became a household name after the Netflix cooking competition Culinary Class Wars (흑백요리사) season 2. She is one of six monks recognised by the Order as a temple food myeongjang (master).

Figures reported by Yonhap News in May 2026, citing the Order’s Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism and the Korea Temple Food Center.

The heritage designation on 19 May 2025 is unusual. Because every temple cooks differently and the whole community passes the tradition on, the government recognised temple food without naming any holder or holding group, the same approach used for community traditions like kimchi-making.

Where can you eat temple food in Seoul?

You have three realistic options: cook it yourself in a class, eat it in the Order’s restaurant, or eat it where it belongs, in a temple.

Korea Temple Food Center (한국사찰음식문화체험관)

The Jogye Order’s own teaching kitchen, on the second floor of the Anguk Building annex by Anguk Station, Exit 1. Classes are taught by monks and nuns, and the sessions labelled for both Korean and foreign participants come with English interpretation. Classes sell out; the October 2026 sessions we checked were already full with waiting lists.

🥢 Korea Temple Food Center, 2026 short programmes (official listings)

You take home what you cook, so the Center asks you to bring your own containers (one 600 ml container per dish), two cloths, a bag for the wet cloths and a pen. Aprons are provided. Video recording is not allowed; photos are fine if other participants are not in them. Refunds are available up to three days before the class.

📍 Open in Naver Map

Balwoo Gongyang (발우공양)

The temple food restaurant run by the Order’s Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism, on the fifth floor of the Templestay Information Center, opposite Jogyesa temple. Courses change with the seasons and run through a sequence of porridge, small dishes, “monk’s smile” foods like dumplings and noodles, and a final rice table.

🍚 Balwoo Gongyang courses (official menu, autumn; prices include tax)

Lunch runs in two sittings, 11:30–13:20 and 13:30–14:50, and dinner 18:00–20:20. It is closed on Sundays. Book ahead by phone (02-733-2081) or through the restaurant’s English site.

Balwoo Gongyang held a Michelin star for several years, including in the 2019 Seoul guide. It is not among the starred restaurants in the Michelin Guide Seoul and Busan 2026, so ignore any listing that still calls it “Michelin-starred”. The food is the same kind of food it always was.

📍 Open in Naver Map

A templestay

The most authentic version is the plainest one. Temple meals at a templestay are simple: rice, soup, a few seasonal side dishes, eaten in the temple dining hall, and often one formal baru gongyang lesson. Our templestay guide compares seven Seoul temples with English programmes, and our Seoul temples top 8 covers the temples themselves.

Is it worth it?

If you think of Korean food as fire and garlic, a temple meal is a reset. The flavours are quieter and cleaner, the textures more varied than you expect, and the soy sauces and pastes do an enormous amount of work. The class is the best value in the city for what you learn in 90 minutes. The restaurant is a good way to see how far the tradition can be pushed. And a bowl of rice and soup eaten in silence at a mountain temple is the version the rest are based on.