Off the southern coast of Korea lies Jeju (Cheju) Island, home to South Korea's highest mountain, Hallasan. With stretches of sandy coastline, lava formed beaches, and volcanic landscape, Jeju has been coined as Korea's Hawaii, and is often a destination for local honeymooners, especially when overseas travel has become so expensive.
It's varied ecology makes for tons to see and do - scuba diving, mountain climbing, lava-tube exploring, sun bathing, museums, waterfalls, gardens, and while the list goes on, we mustn't forget to include Jejudo's cuisine, which is so unique to the island it is almost impossible to find elsewhere in Korea.
We started out culinary adventure on Jeju at a restaurant just across the street from the Lotte Resort, and ordered Samyetang (Chicken and Ginseng Soup), but with an Abalone twist! Abalone is so ubiquitous in Jeju cuisine, as traditional Hanyeo (women divers) would bring back copious amounts in their catch. It is now so highly prized through Korea, Japan & China, that the locals say you hard get any in your meals. However, it was plenty compared to what we would get either in the states or Singapore, and exploited the situation by eating as much Abalone as we could in two days. Abalone rice porridge (chopped), Abalone Seafood Soup (2), Grilled Abalone (12)...
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| Samyetang with a Abalone |
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| Abalone Soup |
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| Grilled Abalone |
Another specialty of Jeju is the Black Pig (Heukdwaji) native to Jeju Island. Black pork is tastier, and supposedly healthier than the regular pig, except that since we ate almost 1 kg of belly meat (bacon in you were wondering), I'm not sure the latter applies. We ordered it stir fried at our first meal, in the traditional Buta Kimchee style, but later the idea of Barbecued Pork Belly overcame us, and that's when we headed to Han Young, the best Black Pork joint on the Island.
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| Kuro-Buta Kimchee |
In mandarin, belly pork is known as "5-flower-meat", because of the five alternating layers of fat and meat. Notice that if you look closely, there are three layers of fat, and only two of meat.
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| A Closer Look |
On the charcoal grill, the fat caramelizes and brings out a lovely smokey flavor, while the meat cooks slowly with the melted lard coating it. Feeling sick just by looking at all the fat? Close your eyes while you eat it, and I promise, there will be no looking back! We loved it so much, we went back for dinner the second night!!
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| On the Grill |
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| Slowly Caramelizing Bacon |
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| Down to the last few bites |
As far as the island seafood goes, we sampled sea urchin soup (Seonggeguk) and grilled Galchi or Hairtail (usually called Belt Fish in other parts of the world), at a restaurant neighboring Han Young, and owned by the same folks as well (surprise). It seems that world-wide, all cultures have discovered that the best way to serve mackerel is salted, sun dried, and then broiled, which is exactly what we at Jeju, another traditional dish. It was the best broiled mackerel I had since we were in Naxos, where we had exactly the same thing as the proprietor convinces us that the dish was "Naxos Specialty". Crispy skin, oily flesh, salty flavor - need I say more?
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| Salted Mackerel |
I survived the whole eating experience by doing other not-quite-as-interesting stuff, that I will mention anyway for the sake of hopeful travelers. This is a food blog ok? Daryl and I climbed Mt Halla mid way, which was about a 9 km round trip, and took about 4 hours, and as if that climbing wasn't enough, we visited went up and down more stairs to visit Cheonjiyeon Waterfall (Pokpo), which has 3 gorges, and is the only waterfall in Asia to fall directly into the sea.
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| No where near the top |
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| Daryl was there too! |
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| First Pond with weird turquoise water |
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| Second Falls |
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| Third Falls - I think they don't let you go down because there's a giant eel that lives in the pond. It's even certified! |
We also hung out a bit at Jungmun, checking out tide pools, mussels and trying to go into the water (that was me, and I made it half way). I also managed to do some running, where I got lost and ended up running on the beach back to the Hyatt, which I will never do again (beach running, not getting lost).
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| Daryl tired after his year's worth of exercise |
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| Steaming I think, works best |
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| The beach! |
It was a great side trip to take from the city, but I'm pretty sure that 2 days is about all my cholesterol can handle. I think I'll wait to recover a couple of years before going back again!
Sneak Preview of More Seoul Culinary Adventures: Hanu, Toro (??!!!), and Hanjeongsik
(Imperial Cuisine)
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