Traveling in Seoul with food allergies
I am a parent to a child with severe food allergies. We traveled to Seoul in March 2026. Before our trip, I read many of the posts on this sub about tips for traveling with food allergies. Now that our trip is completed, I wanted to add my tips and recommendations here in case they help any future travelers.
For some background, my child is anaphylactic to dairy, egg and peanuts. He develops hives to wheat but can consume in small amounts like soy sauce and soy sauce-based seasoning, but cannot eat wheat noodles or bread in any amount. We carry EpiPen and cetirizine with us at all times. We ended up using cetirizine three times for hives (suspected wheat contamination). He did not have any other reaction so I can say with some confidence that we successfully avoided contact with dairy, egg and peanut throughout the trip. If he had contact with them, even minuscule, he would have had a severe reaction (mouth itching, vomiting, facial swelling, etc). Our family does not speak Korean. We used an allergy card and Papago to communicate. With equal amounts of luck and caution, we had a good trip and did not suffer any severe reactions.
Many of the posts in this sub asking for advice for traveling with food allergies seem to receive the responses, "Don't do it!" and "You must cook your own food!" I want to give some support to those out there who are living with food allergies and contemplating visiting Seoul. It's do-able. You must do your research, eat cautiously and always double-check. But this is what regular life with food allergies looks like. If you live with a severe food allergy, I'm sure you're already doing these things on a daily meal-to-meal basis.
I will acknowledge the limitations of my advice. We were mainly in Seoul and Suwon. I cannot speak to visiting any other locations in Korea. We are dealing with the above listed allergies. If you have other allergies (sesame, soy, etc), maybe this advice will not be helpful to you.
On to the actual advice.
#1: Some foods are inherently safe so we felt comfortable eating them in various places. We always used our allergy card and confirmed with the staff.
Foods that did not contain dairy, egg, peanut or wheat:
Seolleongtang (ox-bone soup)
Galbitang (beef bone soup) - make sure it doesn't contain noodles. We asked if it has rice inside. One time, our bowl came with noodles which were hidden under the meat. We couldn't visualize the noodles from the picture. So after that, we always asked if it contained noodles or rice.
BBQ - the meats are usually unmarinated. The servers may sometimes use the same tongs if they are grilling two tables at once (we saw this once) so be mindful to watch out for this potential for cross-contamination.
Bulgogi
Vegan gimbap at Maru Natural Gimbap https://naver.me/GvXTaqYr This was the only gimbap place that we felt confident enough to try as other shops may have a high risk of egg contamination (egg strips is a common ingredient in gimbap).
Suwon Chicken Street DaeBong Chicken https://naver.me/x6UyaCzK I peeled off the fried layer and he ate the chicken within. This worked well. This was a lucky break for us and I didn't want to try our luck too much so we didn't eat fried chicken again for the rest of the trip.
#2: Prior to the trip, I was resigned to not try any street food due to the high possibility of cross-contamination. It's also harder to have a full conversation about ingredients with a stall owner when they are busy with other buyers (compared to a sit-down restaurant, for example). But he was able to try these things and I was so glad he got to have the street food experience!
Odeng (fishcake on a stick) - we tried two stalls (one outside of Mangwon Market and one at the basement of Lotte World Mall) and both were safe. This one surprised me because in the States, fishcake usually contains wheat or egg or both. But these must have been only fish ingredients.
Mul-teok (cylinder of white rice cake on a stick) - eaten at the same stalls as the odeng and it was safe. He also drank the soup and was safe. We didn't try any spicy tteokbokki as he cannot tolerate spicy.
#3: We found that most people were very kind when we used our allergy card. We did have one shopowner say that she couldn't serve us and she "cannot take responsibility" which we understood. No one wants to feel like they are putting their diner at risk. So try not to feel discouraged when this happens. They only want you to have a good experience and if they cannot guarantee that (which is understandable because no one can guarantee health), then they are looking out for your interest by refusing you. Just try again at another place.
#4: Samgye-tang (ginseng chicken soup) probably contained wheat. He ate it and developed hives. This one surprised us. It may have been the seasoning at that particular restaurant, but we never tried this food again for the rest of the trip so I can't speak to whether other restaurants would have used similar seasoning.
#5: We found some really good vegan desserts! These were our favorites. They were GEMS and I cannot recommend them enough. I hope many people see this recommendation and visit these places.
HIDDEN GEM between Namsan Tower and Myeongdong https://naver.me/5Fh9hKge No dairy, eggs or wheat. They do contain some nuts so be cautious if you have a nut allergy. The shopkeeper was very knowledgeable and spoke great English. She said she grew up in Canada. This place was delicious and was literally a hidden gem.
VEGANATURE near Seokchon Lake https://naver.me/5smhUBoZ No dairy, eggs or wheat. They use rice flour instead. My son ate their donuts, twisted churro and seasonal fruit cake (with strawberries). All were delicious and safe.
PAN HONESTA in Itaewon https://naver.me/F1MxV9w5 Had oat milk-based bingsu. Their flavors were mango and chocolate when we went. We tried both. They were delicious! And safe for my son. Remember to ask about nuts if you have a nut allergy. The chocolate bowl contained pistachios.
FULOLLI in the basement of Lotte World, near the Ice Rink https://naver.me/53lyTogw Had vegan gelato. They have non-vegan flavors as well, so we took a bit of time to communicate about cross-contamination. We asked the shopkeeper to dig up a few layers of gelato and then scoop from underneath to avoid the top layer which may have touched the other gelato flavors from previous scoops. She was very kind and patient. He was able to eat it safely. This was a surprise find for me because Fulolli had not come up in any of my previous internet searches.
Hope the above information will help out any future travelers. We are lucky to have traveled internationally many times before with my son and so we are fairly experienced in making decisions around food safety. However, Seoul was our first experience where we didn't speak the language so we were nervous about navigating these conversations. Food-wise, the trip went better than I expected. I still cooked a couple meals for him as a safety back-up option but we ate out mostly every day and he did well.