Live sea bream served raw as hoe. Abalones served raw, stewed or atop a dolsot rice seasoned with abalone liver pâté. Beltfish at peak winter season served in an addictively spicy stew. We had a lot of seafood dishes over 16 days in Korea, but my personal favorite was right here on Jeju Island.
All this wouldn’t be possible without help from local foodies and their Korean language blogs. Don’t expect English menus at the eateries reviewed below; expect the most authentic regional cuisine instead.
Restaurant Review: YONGCHUL HOETJIB (용출횟집) (Jeju) (see map)
This was my favorite meal of our 16-day journey: seafood so fresh they were still moving; motherly service from the gracious ajumma; traditional Jeju specialties with impossibly generous portions. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Evidently most popular among an entire row of hoetjib — Korean for raw fish houses — on the shoreline west of Jeju City, Yongchul is one of those highly specialized restaurants focussing on one thing: it’s own daily selection of whatever is fresh from local fishing boats. Every table aside from ours spoke Korean, including a neighbouring table of Korean and Japanese salarymen enjoying a business dinner with too many bottles of Soju. Needless to say there would be no English menu.
The only choice the customer gets is the species of fish for main course: 100000 Won/Kg for the more affordable hwangdom to a cool 180000 Won/Kg for the exquisite gatdom (i.e. ishidai to sashimi connoisseurs, see my related post from West Japan). The friendly ajumma noticed how clueless these two Canadians were, and recommended 1 kg of hwangdom (황돔), the Jeju specialty of yellow sea bream and a relatively rare fish to be found on Korean Mainland.
Now 100000 Won (CAD$115) for two wasn’t cheap even for Korean seafood aficionados, but wait until you see the variety, quality as well as quantity of local specialities to come, starting with this incredibly fresh turban shell, thickly sliced for added crunch and perfect as appetizer with cho-gochujang or wasabi.
Any seafood dinner in Jeju wouldn’t be complete without the precious abalone, undisputed king of Korean shellfish and the highly esteemed harvest from the haenyeo, Jeju’s dying tradition of female freedivers who risk their lives to bring this delicacy to the table. Lightly umami and delightfully chewy it its raw state, this jeonbok was served in its entirely with the creamy liver in the background, another local favorite in itself.
Perhaps the most famous — or infamous to the squeamish — among raw Korean seafoods, our san-nakji arrived with tentacles still sucking vigorously onto the plate, subsequently our chopsticks and finally our tongues. While copious amounts of sesame oil did help free the octopus from our palate, extra attention had to be paid to this notoriously chewy choking hazard.
By now readers should notice the Korean preference for chewiness in fresh seafood, reaching a pinnacle here with the intensely fibrous and slightly slimy delicacy of haesam, or sea cucumbers. I would have loved a bottle of local soju to wash these down if I weren’t driving.
Ironically the blanched octopus, perhaps the least exotic of the starters and widely known for its rubbery texture, turned out impressively soft. We barely had time to thoroughly appreciate each dish when our proficient chef had already finished cleaning, filleting and plating our live fish on a gigantic platter.
This picture doesn’t do justice to the sheer size — I should have left my puny chopsticks on the side for scale — of the platter, likely our largest ever order of hoe/sashimi/carpaccio in any nationality. Our hwangdom was certainly bigger than the 1 kg that we actually paid for, its main fillet thickly carved for chewiness and the end pieces sliced into long strips in seggosi style.
As we started wrapping our sea bream in perilla leaves, our friendly ajumma decided to take these two foreigners beyond the basic Korean Hoe 101 with her professional opinion on how to do hoessam.
These are the steps I learned from her masterclass:
1. Start with a perilla leaf with the smooth side facing down. This is important as you don’t want the rough underside of the leaf to be the first thing to hit your tongue.
2. One small ball of chobab, or vinegared rice, as a second layer.
3. One slice of roasted seaweed to separate the fish from the vinegared rice.
4. And THEN we finally get to the fish.
5. At last, your choice of condiment — spicy garlic stem, cho-gochujang, ssamjang. Whatever tickles your tastebuds.
The multiple layers of flavours are meant to hit your palate in an optimized sequence as you place the wrapped morsel upside down on your tongue. Perilla to cleanse your palate; condiment and fish as the dominant flavour; roasted seaweed to accentuate the flavour of the sea; vinegared rice and perilla for a refreshing finish.
Now I can impress my Seoulite friend with my newfound Jeju Style.
As we worked continuously towards finishing our 1 kg fish, the kitchen brought even more in the form of a grilled okdom, apparently a winter favorite on both sides of the East Sea / Sea of Japan. We last had this tilefish (i.e. amadai) at the Japanese historic town of Hagi where the default preparation was shioyaki with sea salt in its fresh state. This time it was the Jeju banquet specialty of okdom-gui: semi-dried, brushed with a sweet soya-sesame oil glaze then broiled to an aromatic, slightly charred finish.
As if we weren’t well-fed enough, ajumma brought this large bowl of savory miyeok-guk, or seaweed broth, made with the head and boney portions of our live sea bream. There was still a lot of meat to be picked out, and this would turn into a two hour meal by the time we’re done with these bones.
Our 1 kg sea bream would make one more appearance as a third course, a superb fish porridge with remarkable umami flavours and absolutely no fishiness — this was a live fish after all. Everything from the abalone and san-nakji to the expertly presented hwangdom hoe to the grilled tilefish and seaweed broth was simply top notch.
I have no idea how we managed to finish it all, including the sweet potato tempura and the refreshment of Jeju orange at the end. The businessmen at the next table sounded euphoric the whole time, especially considering that the live sea bream sashimi — kidai ikizukuri in Japan — alone would have easily cost upwards of 8000 yen (CAD$100) in Tokyo. Now you see why I have no qualms about spending 100000 Won (CAD$115) for such an extravagant and authentically Jeju meal.
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