저메추 (jeomechu)

At six in the evening, almost the same message goes up in Korean group chats nearly every single day. 저메추 (jeomechu) is an abbreviation made from the first syllable of each word in 저녁 메뉴 추천 (jeonyeok menyu chucheon, “dinner menu recommendation”), and it means “Recommend me something good to eat for dinner tonight.” When you’re hungry but absolutely cannot decide what to eat, when you’ve opened and shut the fridge door three times, when the delivery app has been open for ten minutes and your thumb is just scrolling — that’s when Koreans pick up the phone and send these three syllables to a friend. “저메추 좀. (jeomechu jom.)”

It’s shaped like a question, but in practice it’s closer to a request. That’s why it usually comes with 좀 (jom) or 부탁해 (butakae) attached. 저메추 좀 (jeomechu jom), 저메추 부탁 (jeomechu butak), 저메추 해 줘 (jeomechu hae jwo) — all three say the same thing. It started out as the long sentence 저녁 메뉴 추천 좀 해 줘 (jeonyeok menyu chucheon jom hae jwo), but only the first three syllables survived; everything after them was dropped wholesale, and the stub hardened into a word of its own. Which is why it looks strange if you take it apart with a grammar book — a single noun is doing the work of an entire sentence.

It comes at roughly three temperatures. The first is when you genuinely can’t decide. Here you really are waiting for an answer. The second is when you’re bored and need an excuse to talk to someone. 저메추 (jeomechu) sits in exactly the same slot that 밥 먹었어? (bap meogeosseo?, “Have you eaten?”) occupies as a way of asking how someone is doing. The third is when you’ve already decided — you want malatang, and you’re waiting for someone else to say the word “마라탕 (maratang).” Whichever of the three it is, they all share one thing: this is how a person who is alone reaches out to someone else.

One more thing: the phrase gets used on the receiving end too. The person handing out recommendations might open with a joking 저메추 받습니다 (jeomechu batseumnida), “now taking dinner requests,” and after a good meal you might report back with 저메추 성공 (jeomechu seonggong), “dinner rec: success.” So one three-syllable abbreviation runs the whole cycle as a set — request → response → review.

Seeing It in a Real Conversation

Situation: Friday evening, 6:20 p.m., on the subway home from work. Both of them are hanging onto a strap and looking at their phone one-handed.

Jun-kyung: 아, 배고파 죽겠다. 너 오늘 저녁 뭐 먹어? Ugh, I’m starving. What are you having for dinner today?

Emily: 몰라, 아직 못 정했어. 저메추 좀. No idea, haven’t decided yet. Give me a dinner rec.

Jun-kyung: 음… 날도 쌀쌀한데 순댓국 어때? Hmm… it’s chilly out, how about sundae-guk?

Emily: 어제 국밥 먹었어. 다른 거. I had gukbap yesterday. Something else.

Jun-kyung: 야, 이럴 거면 저메추는 왜 받아. 그냥 네가 먹고 싶은 거 말해. Hey, why even ask for a dinner rec if you’re gonna do that. Just say what you want.

Emily: ㅋㅋㅋ 들켰네. 나 사실 아까부터 마라탕 생각났어. Hahaha, busted. Honestly I’ve been thinking about malatang this whole time.

Those last two lines are the true face of this expression. In Korea, six or seven out of every ten people who ask for a 저메추 (jeomechu) already have their answer. That’s why 저메추 받아 놓고 다 싫대 (jeomechu bada noko da silttae, “they ask for dinner recs and then say no to every single one”) is an old group-chat joke.

When This Sounds Off

✗ (To your department head) 부장님, 저메추 좀 해 주세요. (bujangnim, jeomechu jom hae juseyo.) Sir, give me a dinner rec.

✓ (To your department head) 부장님, 이 근처에 저녁 드실 만한 데 있을까요? (bujangnim, i geuncheoe jeonyeok deusil manhan de isseulkkayo?) Sir, is there anywhere around here you’d go for dinner?

→ The grammar is perfectly fine, but the setting is wrong. 저메추 is internet slang used between peers, so aiming it at someone senior to you or at a business contact makes you look like someone treating a company dinner as a joke. With people above you, don’t abbreviate — spell the whole sentence out. That’s the safe move.

✗ (11:40 a.m., in a group chat with friends) 얘들아, 저메추! (yaedeura, jeomechu!) Guys, dinner recs!

✓ (11:40 a.m., in a group chat with friends) 얘들아, 점메추! (yaedeura, jeommechu!) Guys, lunch recs!

→ This word comes with a timetable attached. The 저 (jeo) in 저메추 comes from 저녁 (jeonyeok, “evening”), so using it at lunchtime sounds like saying “sleep well” in the morning. Lunch gets 점메추 (jeommechu, from 점심 메뉴 추천 / jeomsim menyu chucheon, “lunch menu recommendation”). Some people build breakfast or late-night-snack versions the same way, but those are far rarer; the two that have genuinely set and spread are 저메추 and 점메추.

Example Sentences by Situation

① When you surrender in front of the fridge (group chat with friends)

This is the scene people who live alone run into most often at dinnertime. It’s not that there’s nothing to eat — it’s that there’s no energy left for choosing, so they hand the job to someone else.

얘들아 저메추 좀. 나 냉장고 앞에서 십 분째 서 있어. (yaedeura jeomechu jom. na naengjanggo ape sip bunjjae seo isseo.) Guys, someone recommend a dinner. I’ve been standing in front of the fridge for ten minutes.

② When you’re the one giving the recommendation (partner or family)

When you get asked, the Korean way is not to toss out a dish bare but to attach a reason. The weather, what they ate yesterday, the mood right now — any of these works as grounds.

저메추 받습니다. 비 오니까 오늘은 무조건 칼국수지. (jeomechu batseumnida. bi onikka oneureun mujokkeon kalguksuji.) Taking dinner requests. It’s raining, so it’s got to be kalguksu today.

③ After you’ve eaten (social media / YouTube comments)

On the Korean internet there’s a culture of reporting back on the results once you’ve taken someone’s recommendation. One short line is plenty.

어제 저메추 고마워. 완전 성공했어. (eoje jeomechu gomawo. wanjeon seonggonghaesseo.) Thanks for the dinner rec yesterday. Total success.

Polite and Casual Forms, and Similar Expressions

저메추 (jeomechu) has, for all practical purposes, no polite form. Even just raising the ending to 저메추 해 주세요 (jeomechu hae juseyo) sounds off, because the word itself was built on the assumption of light, peer-to-peer speech. In a setting that calls for formality, you have to switch to a completely different sentence.

Expression	Tone & intensity	Where it’s used
저메추 (jeomechu)	Light and friendly, a little playful	Group chats with peers, social media, comments. Not used with people senior to you
점메추 (jeommechu)	Identical to 저메추, only the time of day differs	Just before lunch, roughly 11 a.m. to noon
뭐 먹지? (mwo meokji?)	Neutral, close to thinking out loud	Anywhere. Doesn’t necessarily expect an answer
저녁 뭐 먹을까? (jeonyeok mwo meogeulkka?)	Neutral and warm	To someone you’ll eat with. Family, friends, a partner
저녁 메뉴 좀 추천해 주시겠어요? (jeonyeok menyu jom chucheonhae jusigesseoyo?)	Polite and formal	People senior to you, business contacts, someone you’ve just met

The difference between the third and fourth rows is especially useful for learners. 뭐 먹지? (mwo meokji?) is you agonizing over what you alone will eat, while 저녁 뭐 먹을까? (jeonyeok mwo meogeulkka?) is a proposal that the two of us pick something to eat together. 저메추 sits between the two: you’re the one eating, but the choosing is handed over to the other person.

Cultural Background — Decision Fatigue at Six O’Clock

The way the word is built is simple. Peel off the first letter of each word in 저녁 메뉴 추천 and stick them together. It’s the most common formula in Korean internet abbreviations, which is why, once you know the original phrase, an abbreviation you’ve never seen before is already half-readable. The formula extends easily too: swap in lunch and you get 점메추 (jeommechu).

Why this particular phrase became a daily ritual is obvious the moment you open a delivery app just once. The screen scrolls on endlessly — 치킨 (chikin, fried chicken), 족발 (jokbal, braised pig’s trotters), 마라탕 (maratang), 돈가스 (donkkaseu, pork cutlet), 국밥 (gukbap, rice in soup), 샐러드 (saelleodeu, salad) — and the more options pile up, the more choosing stops being a pleasure and turns into labor. After working all day, nobody wants to spend their last remaining scrap of judgment on a dinner menu. So people outsource that judgment to someone else. 저메추 is the language of hunger and, at the same time, the language of decision fatigue.

There’s one more layer. In Korea, 밥 먹었어? (bap meogeosseo?) isn’t a question asking for information; it’s a question asking how you are. There’s a long-standing habit of asking, by way of food, whether someone’s day has been okay, and 저메추 is the modern version of that habit. When someone living alone tosses 저메추 좀 (jeomechu jom) into a group chat at six in the evening, they’re asking about the menu and simultaneously saying, “I’m bored right now — is anyone there?” That’s why the conversation keeps going even when the answer is 아무거나 (amugeona, “anything”). The menu was never the point to begin with.

This scene is familiar from Korean dramas and variety shows too: coworkers squabbling over dinner in front of the elevator right before heading home, then walking to the same place they always go anyway. If you’re watching Korean content and the characters spend an unusually long time on 뭐 먹지 (mwo meokji, “what should I eat”), that’s not the script dragging — it’s because that’s genuinely how a Korean evening unfolds.

Today’s Quiz

It’s 11:50 a.m., and you want to say “pick what I should eat” in your group chat with friends. Which one should you use?

저메추 (jeomechu)
점메추 (jeommechu)
저메추 해 주시겠어요? (jeomechu hae jusigesseoyo?)

Show the answer

Answer: 2, 점메추 (jeommechu)

It’s lunchtime right now, so 점메추 — short for 점심 메뉴 추천 (jeomsim menyu chucheon, “lunch menu recommendation”) — is the correct one. Option 1, 저메추, is only for dinner. Option 3 forces a polite ending onto an abbreviation, so it sounds awkward between friends; with someone senior to you, it’s more natural to spell the sentence out in full, as in 점심 메뉴 좀 추천해 주시겠어요? (jeomsim menyu jom chucheonhae jusigesseoyo?).

Definitions and example sentences are from the National Institute of Korean Language’s Basic Korean Dictionary (krdict.korean.go.kr); that portion of this post, including our translations, is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 KR.