10 November 2022
As a coastal city, Seogwipo has many restaurants specializing in fresh, local seafood, especially along Chilsimni Food Street.
We chose to eat at Horim Sikdang (호림식당), located just opposite our hotel (BK Hotel). The appearance of the restaurant was quite misleading. It looked small and dark when we were outside the restaurant. But once we went inside, we found that the restaurant was actually quite big and crowded! There was no empty table on the ground floor and we were told to go up the second floor.
The restaurant has quite an extensive seafood menu. For this dinner, we ordered a Trigger Fish sashimi set for 120,000 KWR and a large spicy seafood stew (Haemultang) for 70,000 KWR for our group of 7 persons to share.
In addition to the basic side dishes served in Korean restaurant, the live fish sashimi set came with some exotic seafood side dishes.
Edamame (young green soybeans), pickled onions, seaweed and cherry tomatoes.
Side dishes that came with the live fish sashimi set include the pieces of boiled octopus, braised quail eggs, sliced top shell snails, pickled garlic, slices of red pickled ginger, mixed vegetables,
Steamed prawns served as part of the sashimi set.
A bony fish head with some fermented bean sauce.
Cold crab meat.
This platter with fresh oysters, sliced raw abalone sashimi with intestines served on its shell, sliced raw turban shell snails and other strange sea creatures.
Raw shellfish sashimi platter.
I took a leap of faith and tried all the exotic raw seafood, washed down with soju. I don’t particularly like raw stuff but I was game to try. Some of the raw shellfish are actually quite hard and bland. Not nice at all.
Finally the main course of live triggerfish sashimi was served. The triggerfish sashimi has a crunchy texture but was a bit bland on its own. The Korean way of eating the raw fish is to dip the fish in spicy gochujang sauce, and wrapped it with either fresh lettuce or perilla leaves. These are best paired with soju or makgeolli.
Fresh and thinly sliced triggerfish sashimi made from 3 live triggerfish.
Live triggerfish in the tanks outside the restaurant.
A bowl of hot fish stew made from the heads and bones scraps from the triggerfish sashimi was served at the end of the meal. From the heads and bones, it looked like three fish was used in the preparation of the sashimi. This fish soup was light but tasty. I actually enjoyed this soup more than the sashimi.
Along with the sashimi, we had the haemultang. Haemultang is a Korean spicy seafood stew filled with an abundance of fresh seafood in a hot bowl with octopus, mussels, abalones, scallops, clams, sea snails, crab and a bunch of strange oval shaped stuff.
The haemultang is served with standard side dishes.
The pot overflowing with seafood was boiled with a gas stove fitted in the middle of the dining table. We could see the abalone squirming in the pot. We quickly dunked the live abalones in the boiling broth to kill them quickly. After about 15 minutes, the stew with all the seafood was cooked and ready to eat.
Close-up view of the pot of seafood.
In some restaurants, an entire live octopus was served. I was glad that the only live seafood in the pot was the abalones and shellfishes. I certainly do not want to see an octopus crawling out of the boiling pot and running for its life.
Are these some kind of sea squirts?
There is one ingredient in the seafood hotpot that is rather strange. I believe they may be some kind of sea squirts.
They are oval in shape, similar in size to olives and have a rather strange outer texture with lumps all over. They looked quite disgusting when raw but turned entirely grey coloured once cooked. I was game to try one of them. They were quite hard and tough, and biting into one of them resulted in a stream of liquid squirting out from the ends. I spat out the whole thing. I wonder how the locals could enjoy eating them.
Actually, the best thing about the seafood stew is the broth. Extremely tasty with loads of umami and natural sweetness from the ingredients. It reminded me of the tasty broth in Singapore prawn noodle soup but many times more flavourful.
When planning my trip, I had compiled a list of Jeju cuisine that we should try. In this dinner, we got to taste two of Jeju’s popular seafood cuisine, the haemultang and the live fish sashimi.
Later that night, back in the hotel, the seafood had their revenge!
I had stomach upset as my digestive system was not used to the bacteria found in the local seafood, probably from one of the raw shellfish side dishes. It was a good thing that I always travelled with a first kit containing some basic medications. I took two carbon pills and all was good by morning.
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