Mongolia is a notoriously tough place to get your 5-a-day and wholefoods, but if you're craving fresh produce while visiting Ulaanbaatar you no longer need rely on those suspiciously glossy looking imports in the State Department Store. There's now a single row of stalls in the square outside the former Museum of the Revolution every Saturday selling home-grown berries, vegetables caked in the soil of the steppes, honey, fungi, an array of sour but sumptuous cheeses and other intriguing commestibles. The atmosphere is typically friendly and down to earth, and you can sample the cheese and honey. Best of all, you can duck into the guanz (cafeteria ger) at the end of the row and hunker down with the locals to quaff bowl after bowl of fermented mare's milk while chewing a plateful of horsemeat (the Mongolian equivalent of mother and child reunion) boiled up with jacket potatoes.

About a kilometre west of the Natural History Museum on Khuvsgalchdyn Orgon Toroo, the street north of and parallel to Peace Avenue.

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If you fancy a quick, satisfying meal on the cheap, check out a Korean restaurant. Generally speaking it is hard to go wrong. For no less than 5000 tugrugs, you can have an excellent kimchi soup, or maybe a pork, beef or chicken based spicy dish with rice. This comes along with unlimited tea, plus a random selection of side dishes for free, comprising of whatever the restaurant has in the fridge. Common surprises include seaweed, beansprouts, kimchi, cold potato salad and much more. Three of the best are situated on the east side of the state department store.

Near the state department store and all over town.

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The best place to eat in summer. Upstairs has a European-style menu with excellent dishes at prices not dissimilar to other less impressive restaurants in town. The balcony is the best place to enjoy a beer in summer whilst looking at the view of Choijin Lama Monastery Museum and feeling the peace away from the main roads. Downstairs is a newly-opened Asian restaurant with great Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian cuisine. Lovely décor, good service and a good location completes the picture.

Tel: +976 91914455

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A Korean restaurant in Nairamdal park. It has scores of truly delicious Korean dishes with lots of fresh vegetables and salads. If you are a vegetarian and have found slim pickings in rural Mongolia, this is the place to go for a feast! Not cheap by Mongolian standards, but very reasonable by Western standards.

Sit on the glassed-in terrace with a view over the park if you are having a la carte, or in the red-carpeted interior if you are going for the buffet. The menus have helpful pictures and English translations.

Off Chinggis Avenue in the south of Nairamdal park. 326554

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