More wriggly octopus tentacles - Jagalchi Fish Market, Busan

Typical Melvin and Quinine duo, straight after we check into our hotel in Busan we head straight to the nearest fish market, Jagalchi Market. Similar to Noryangjin Market in Seoul, the ground floor has heaps of stalls selling sea cucumber, sea squirts, fish, abalone etc. The main difference at this market is that you don't have to pick up your seafood and take it to the nearest restaurant for them to cook it. You can just head to a restaurant on the second floor and pick what you want from a menu. Melvin and I chose the first place we could see, Jacky's Seafood, which had its very own tanks of live seafood.

We were greeted immediately by Jacky, who speaks English quite well. He kindly told us which seafood was in season and the best way to eat it. Taking on his recommendations, we ordered 1kg of steamed snow crab, sannakji, sea cucumber sashimi and sea urchin. (I need to correct myself before I go any further, in the Noryangjin post, I said we ate sea cucumber sashimi with the sea squirt. We actually ate something called Echiuroid which must be the scientific name for sea doodle).

What we loved about Jacky's is that the little grandmas brought out plenty of banchan for us to pick at whilst waiting for our food. First thing that came out was the sea cucumber sashimi. I've only ever eaten cooked cucumber which is usually pretty tasteless and chewy so having it sashimi style is a new experience for me. l had to take a few deep breaths before popping a slice into my mouth. Sea cucumber is really ugly. lt's bumpy and a gross green colour. When I did get over how disgusting it looked and started chewing on it I wasn't surprised that that taste was pretty bland. What did surprised me was it twitched when I picked it up with my chopsticks. It was also quite crunchy instead of being chewy. The sea cucumber was served with its orange stringy guts...........so we ate that too. 

The next main event was our plate of sannakji that was doing some serious boogieing, our last plate of sannakji wasn't as flashy. Don't know whether it was because there was more tentacles or whether because it was served with sesame oil mixed in already but this plate was having its own dance party. A super delicious dance party.

Sea urchin is an enpensive delicacy especially if it was as fresh as the ones we ate. Jacky serves the raw sea urchin with dried seaweed instead of on a bit of rice like at Japanese sushi restaurants. Fresh sea urchin is not for everybody but if you are a sashimi lover like me than you will love this. Super tasty, a little sweet from the urchin and a little salty from the seaweed. Perfect combination.

Our final dish was the steamed snow crab. I love crab.....like really love it, but sometimes it annoys me at how difficult it is to eat. However, at Jacky's, the way that it is prepared makes it so easy to scrape out big deliciously sweet chunks of crab meat. If I had the money, I would permanently move to Busan, live right next to this market and eat crab all day.............and all of the night.

As you might have realised, l really liked Jacky's seafood at Jagalchi market in Busan.

Jacky's sign

Jacky's tanks

Jacky's tank

Banchan

Sea cucumber sashimi

Melvin eating sea cucumber guts

Sannakji

Sea urchin

Snow crab

Jagalchi ground floor

Dinner from 7/11

The downside of staying in a remote area is that your choice of dinner can be limited to what is stocked at the nearest convenient store. Lucky for me, South Korean 7/11's are stocked quite well and I got myself a 3 course meal for two. So tonight I blog about a dinner that cost a total of ₩7450 that I paid with my public transport card (myki has nothing on this card). 

For entree, we had a pizza burger and a chicken cutlet burger. We have no microwave at our place so we attempted to heat up the burgers on a frying pan. Our first attempt we burnt the buns without melting the cheese. Second attempt wasn't so bad but the chicken was cold. Overall, they were pretty tasty for burgers out of a packet.

Main course!! Of course we had instant noodles. I think one was kimchi flavoured and the other was spicy crab. The spicy crab was the spicier one out of the two, similar to the Shim Ramyun level of spiciness.

Now dessert we had a One Piece chocolate Swiss roll filled with choc chips and some sort of peanut bun. The Swiss roll came with a Sanji sticker that is now on my suitcase.

Tomorrow we go to Busan and hopefully get to eat some more fresh seafood. I might even blog about the delicious food I've had in the past couple of days too.

Korean BBQ Gangnam Style - Bon Ga (본가)

Meat? Gooooooood. Korean BBQ?? Very gooooooood. I probably like Korean BBQ more than I probably should. I'm surprised in myself that it wasn't until Day 3 that l went to a proper Korean BBQ joint. The place we went to was just south of Gangman station in a side street. From the multilingual menu, this place' is known for serving a particular part of the cow but very thinly. Maybe a bit too thin because I found I had to put a few slices into my lettuce wrap.

Melvin and I tried to order a meat platter but the waiter told us it was for 3-4 people. So we attempted to order four different meats but the waiter again told us it was too much food. Normally waiters are correct when it comes to portions of food but in this instance ours was wrong. Although I was full, Melvin claimed he could have eaten more. 

This restaurant provided the usual bean paste, raw garlic (man my breath was stinky for the rest of the day), mountain portions of sides and a great selection of lettuce leaves. I read up later that you can order the spicy versions of our thinly shied meat, but considering the amount of chilli induced pimples on my face, this was probably for the better.

It may have been because Melvin and l were the only eating customers in the restaurant at 3pm but we had our grill plate changed over at least two times. I wonder if they change it that often when it is busy during normal eating hours.

The meal was pretty good, to be honest I've tasted better at a friend's house. So I guess l just have to try other Korean BBQ restaurants whilst I'm into country. No complaining there.

Korean Porridge for breakfast

There are actbroccoliite a lot of cafes in South Korea that serve Western style breakfast like eggs and sausages on toast. But if you are in Asia, ccongee is usually the way to start your day. I actually don't know the name of this place we went to.The name is in Chinese which translates to something along the lines of good taste. So the congee must be good here?

Well it's very hard to screw up congee, the worst it could be is tasteless and watery. Melvin ordered the king crab and I ordered the abalone mushroom. This place was pretty busy considering it was 10:30am on a weekday (I'm definitely on holiday mode, my meals are 2 hours later than they should be). Lots of people at a random time is definitely a good sign for tasty food.

Melvin's came out first and it looked good. Lots of crab meat and a generous sprinkle of seaweed and roasted sesame seeds. I was also very pleased with the selection of pickled banchan. They were the perfect combination with congee. Without adding the sides, both flavours were delicious. The crab slightly sweet and the abalone had just the right level of flavour. Maybe it's the way it's served elsewhere but abalone dishes tend to be quite salty. 

Overall the congee was really good. One of the best comfort foods on a winters day.

Entrance

Menu

King crab porridge

Banchan

Abalone and mushroom porridge

Entrance

Shrimp and broccoli porridge

Ginseng Chicken porridge

The Great KFC (Korean Fried Chicken) debate - Noona Hol Dak (누나훌닭) and Twotwo (들들)

So our #1 mission in South Korea is to find out if the fried chicken here is actually better than Gami Chicken and Beer in Melbourne (a proclamation made by native friends). #2 mission is to watch Starcraft 2 (check).

Restaurant #1 -Noona Hol Dak in Myeongdong.

We ordered the half original and half spicy sauce combo. I should mention that the chicken here is roasted, not battered and deep fried like Gami. Our choice of beer was Hoegaarden and Kirin (price difference between those and the local brews were about ₩1000 so we went with the better choice). It seems to be a standard in fried chicken restaurants to get a complimentary plate of pickled radish and an empty bucket for bones. Noona also provided a bowl of popcorn and additional sauces.

Our plate came out with thinly cut fries which is included in all chicken orders. We tried the spicy first. After eating at Yoogane, we didn't expect it to be very spicy. Well.........after one bite Melvin had sculled his beer and ordered another one. The taste? Awesome. Compared to Gami, the chicken has no batter and also less sauce. For fun we also ordered the corn cheese.Normally at Gami we make fun of corn cheese but have never ordered it. lt pretty much taste like what it is, corn and cheese with random bits of capsicum.

Besides the whole 20minute recovery required after one spicy chicken piece, Noona Hol Dak is a definite contender against Gami chicken.

Restaurant #2- Two Two (들들) in Myeongdong

The internet tells me that this is the KFC franchise to try being the favourite chicken and beer amongst expat bloggers living in Seoul. Apparently it was the first chicken and beer franchise to open in Seoul. Now with all that hype, we had to try it out for ourselves. Lucky there was a joint near our hotel which makes it a lot easier to roll home. We ordered the half original and half sweet chilli here didn't seem to be a spicy option which probably worked out better considering the fiery hell I put my digestive system the night before. 1Our choice of beverages was a Cass beer and a Korean non-alcoholic cider which tasted exactly like lemonade,

What did we think?Well the quality of chicken was really good, I think the chickens are smaller and therefore have less meat compared to the fat and oversized ones back at home in Australia. The smaller the animal , the tastier they are. Well that's my logic. Other than that, we were not very impressed. I know I just crapped on about small chickens being more tasty but the pieces of chicken at this place pretty much had a meat to bone ratio of 1:1. The taste was quite nice but it wasn't as good as Noona. With a price of around ₩16000 (~$17) a plate, I'm recommending Nona Hot Dak to those visiting Seoul. 

Noona Hol Dak - Popcorn, pickles, black sesame sauce and spicy sauce

Noona Hol Dak - ₩6000 for each beer (Cheap!!!)

Noona Hol Dak - Our wonderful plate of chicken

Noona Hol Dak - Corn Cheese

Two Two - Cider and Beer

Two Two - Our order

Two Two - Sweet chilli

Two Two - Our finished chicken

Moving tentacles and sea squirts - Noryangjin Fish Market

It was a late morning for us, we slept for about 12 hours and then kind of lingered in bed for an hour whilst watching Flight Plan (first movie Sean Bean didn't die??). When we finally succeeded in getting our skinny jeans on over our long johns, We made our way to the Noryangjin Fish Market and picked ourselves up some interesting stuff.

We bought a whole fluke, two abalones, a sea squirt (or sea pineapple), two sea cucumbers and a baby octopus. I have a feeling that we may have been ripped off (even after haggling in a mixture of terrible Korean and Mandarin) but we were too excited about our food. After paying, the fish seller gave our bag of goods to another lady (who was also speaking to us in Mandarin) who then brought us to a restaurant on the second level.

Our next challenge was trying to communicate with a waitress how we wanted our seafood cooked. Again I was speaking very broken Mandarin to a Korean lady fluent in Mandarin (should probably had stayed in Chinese school for more than a year when I was 11). Well the waitress went off and and came back with our first dish, fluke sashimi. Probably the freshest sashimi I have ever had (I say this because we ordered a whole fluke and saw the guy bash it in the head with a hook). There isn't a lot of taste in fluke compared to fatty tuna or salmon, next time we will get a whole salmon from this market (yes I will be back).

Our next dish was the sea squirt and sea cucumber, sashimi style. The sea cucumber had a mild sweet flavour and the sea squirt was.........slimy and a bit bitter. Probably won't order that again. Finally, the main reason we came to South Korea, sannakji 산낙지. Baby octopus cut up whilst still alive and served whilst still moving. To decrease the chances of a tentacle getting stuck in our throats and causing us to choke to death, we dipped the wriggling pieces into sesame oil and chewed for a very long time before swallowing. Our verdict? Super delicious. Definitely recommend everyone who visits Korea to try it.

The last dishes to come out was the other half of our fluke cooked in some sort of sauce and our BBQ'd abalone. The abalone had some nasty looking green guts (tastes like the usual guts taste).

So that was our late breakfast (at 12pm).

Fluke 

Sea squirt

Melvin with some fishmonger

Psy

Sannakji

Sannakji

Fluke sashimi

Sea squirt and sea cucumber

Sannakji

Abalone 

Abalone guts