Kimchi  Doenjang  Tteokguk  Songpyeon  Noodles  Bulgogi  Bibimbap   Sinsollo   What are the popular restaurants and dishes in Pyongyang?

Korean foods are divided into four categories- staple food and subsidiary food(ban-chan), confection
and drink. Staple food include boiled cereals, rice cakes, noodles, gruel, pancakes and jellies.
Boiled cereals include boiled rice, barley and kaoliang. Sometime these cereals are mixed and boiled.

Special meals include glutinous rice mixed with honey and fruit and rice hash. The former is prepared by steaming glutinous rice mixed with honey, chestnut, dates, sesame oil, pine-nuts, walnuts, etc. Due to its delicacy it is well known from olden times. The latter is made by mixing boiled rice with seasoned greens, sliced raw fish and meat, boiled meat, and mussel broiled on the skewer.
Rice cake is favorite food of the Korean people. It has more than 50 varieties, which differ in their materials and method of preparation.

Typical of rice cake are glutinous rice cake and rice cake steamed on a layer of pine needles. The former is made by steaming glutinous rice and then pounding it. The latter is  prepared by adding hot water to rice flour and kneading it into crescent – or clam-shaped doughs (or half-moon), which are stuffed with filling. Red beans, soy beans, jujubes, sesame seeds, chestnuts and the like are used as filling. The stuffed doughs spread on pine needles are steamed. Hence its name Songpyeon(pine-steamed cake).

Noodles are a good staple food. Their materials are wheat, buckwheat, potato starch or maize flour. Buckwheat noodles are especially popular, and Pyongyang cold noodles are made of buckwheat.
Gruel is one of the staple foods. It includes grain gruel and mixed gruel.
Typical grain gruels are rice gruel, gruel prepared with rice and green peas, and gruel prepared with rice and red-beans. As gruels prepared with materials other than cereals, gruels cooked with apricot seeds, pinenuts, chestnuts or fish can be cited.

Among Korean side dishes are soup, stew, broth, bouillon, kimchi pickles, salad, steamed fish, kabob, roasts, hard-boiled foods, sliced boiled meat, sliced raw fish or meat, dried slices of meat seasoned with spices, and pickles.

Soup is often served at breakfast and supper. Hot soup is usually preferred, but in summer cold soup is often served.

Among stews Sinsollo brass chafing dish is popular. The Sinsollo chafing dish is prepared by boiling its ingredients exceeding 30 kinds such as eggs, meat, trepangs, mush-room, and broad bellflower roots in a brass dish people eat it with liquor while it is broiling . This ih a unique dish.

kimchi pickles is a national food most widespread of all korean side dishes. it is prepared with cabbage, radish and other vegetables and wild edible herbs mixed with garlic, green onion, red pepper and other seasonings, fruit and fish pickles.

Typical of Korean candies and cakes are taffy, oil-and-honey pastry, taffy candy, Tasik cake, fruits preserved in honey, etc.

Drinks include various alcoholic beverages and soft drinks. alcoholic beverages include coarse wine and rice wine with low alcoholic contents and hard liquor with high alcoholic content. The coarse wine has a low alcoholic content and is refreshing to drink. It is widely used as a soft drink.

Rice wine has moderate alcoholic content. So, it is widely used for the banquet table.

Depending on the methods of distillation and the kinds and amount of medicinal herbs put in it, hard liquor has varied local flavours. Noted among them are the kamhongno liquor of the Pyongyang area, pyokhyang whisky of South Pyongan province, and Koryo insam liquor of thr Kaesong area.

Well-known soft drinks include Hwachae punch, Sujonggwa cold punch and Schizandra chinensis juice mixed with honeyed fruits and pinenuts with ice added to it.It is offered as a soft drink in summer.