Seoul for The Food Pilgrims: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

Start at the bindaetteok stalls where mung beans are ground on stone mills, then the mayak gimbap with mustard; stand, eat, move along the aisle.

The 1946 house of Pyongyang naengmyeon: buckwheat noodles in a cold broth that tastes of almost nothing until the third mouthful, with bulgogi on a brass grill.

Cocktails built on Korean spirits, soju distilled in Andong and sweet-potato liquor, in a hanok in Seochon; ask for whatever is made with omija.

Pick a flounder or a box of sea squirts from the tanks, bargain a little, and carry it to the upstairs restaurants that slice it for a small fee.

Three hours in a teaching kitchen off Insadong: kimchi, bulgogi and pajeon from scratch, with the lesson that gochugaru is not one thing but a dozen.

Yim Jung-sik's Michelin-starred tasting menu, the one that made 'new Korean' a category: a bibimbap the size of a coin, sea urchin on seaweed rice.

The biggest herb and produce market in the country, ginseng by the sack and dried jujubes by the crate, with a Starbucks in the old cinema upstairs.

Two floors on rice cake, the food of every Korean rite, with the moulds and steamers of the Institute of Traditional Korean Food; the shop sells the day's batch.

Naengmyeon the Euljiro way since 1985, a cold beef broth, buckwheat noodles and a fried mandu to share, in a dining room that looks like a canteen on purpose.

The covered market as the ajummas set out their trays: fried tteokbokki in soy oil, sesame leaves, egg rolls; buy brass coins and fill a lunch tray.

Three floors on fermentation above Insadong, with the crocks, the microscopes and a tasting room where a dozen regional kimchis are lined up by heat.

The oldest restaurant in the city, licensed in 1904, and still one dish: milky ox-bone soup, rice in the bowl, salt and spring onion from the jar.