Tigers and Cranes

Busan is a rather pretty city. I hadn’t noticed this before, since the last time I was here, I just blew through the city on my way to Seoul, but this time, I did the proper tourist thing, and spent some more time in this port city.

Arriving in the train station, it was a quick taxi ride to “Jagalchi” Fish market, and by the sheer scale and the number of stalls and shops that sell various assortment of fresh seafood, you’d think the entire Busanite’s diet consists of fish, crabs, and shellfish. Actually, that might not be stretching the truth much, since it seemed like most people who were shopping in this sprawling market were mostly locals. Afterall, what is a tourist going to do with five pounds of slimy snake-looking fish?

The outside market is teeming with vendors, but once you enter the rather nice indoor fish market, prepare to be blown away. I’ve never seen anything like it, with rows upon rows of stalls each selling some sort of seafood, and the place is densely packed with fish tanks, holding tanks, and just plain seawater gushing everywhere, especially the floor. Don’t even think about entering this place wearing sandals. Fortunately, I was wearing a sturdy pair of non-slip shoes, and even that was a dicey proposition, as the entire first floor might as well be as slick as a water theme park.

Second floor is where patrons go to eat the abovementioned seafood. Once again, the whole of second floor is packed densely with restaurant stalls, each proclaiming to have fresher seafood than the one next to it. I must have counted at least forty such restaurants.

With this many number of places all selling the same food, how does one choose? I suggest the reader not dilly-dally trying to pick a place to eat. If you stroll through this area, every vendor will try to grab yo and amke you sit at their table. At first, I felt bad declining each and everyone, but after a while, getting desperately hungry, one must simply choose, and my criteria was which restaurant had the best view.

I chose one with a nice large (electrically operated)window facing the beautiful harbor.

Sitting on the wooden floor(no chairs here… it’s all Korean style). It was decided that the meal would be (LARGE) sashimi set. While hirame(flounder, my favorite) was one of the most delicious sashimi I’ve ever had, the sheer amount and variety of “service” dishes made my head swim. There were live octopus(I finally ate some. I tried to re-enact the sushi bar scene from the movie “Old Boy”. ), Hoya(sea squirt), some kind of marinaded fish, conch, shrimp, abalones, some othe kind of crunchy fish, and dozen other plates i can’t remember now.

and to top it all off, really excellent “meh-oon-tang”, a type of spicy fish soup.

If you are a seafood lover, I can hardly recommend a better restuarant(s) than the one you will find in “Jagalchi” Fish Maket. Make sure you bring your appetite.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 12:49 am and is filed under food, korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.