Live octopus is easier than smelt

The Monday after our temple stay we went to meet up with Shannon and Ryan in Nampo Dong, a big shopping area near Jagalchi fish market. To the left is what we found there. A lady and her look-a-like dog. Yes, that dog's wearing socks as well as shoes. And pants. And a jacket.

We wandered and wondered for a while before coming to the point of it all, which was sashimi (called hoe pronounced hway in S. Korea) dinner at Jagalchi. Brian and I had experienced this delight once before, but we had a new mission. Find the best of the Jagalchi restaurants, and eat a live octopus. San nakji is live baby octopus, though it's not really alive when you eat it. We found that the live smelt we ate in Inje was not very common and many Koreans were amazed or horrified that we'd done it. But san nakji is very popular.

Apparently, so is sea slug. They looked charred but maybe they were just dried out. That's them on the pink plate in the picture below.

It took us a lot of talking and even more tenacity, but eventually we found an ajumoni (endearing term for middle aged Korean woman) willing and able to grant our wishes. She was the first to bring out the little octopus with a knife instead of a plastic bag of water. She filled up a Styrofoam of spicy sauce and chopped the little guys legs into bite size bits and let us dig in. Behold.

Shannon's got some videos I'll post when I get them from her, for now just stills. It was squirmy wormy but much easier than the smelt, and more delicious I think. It's little suckers were so small though that when it grabbed your cheek or tongue it felt like you were being poked rather than pulled. All the other ajumonis were peeking out of their stalls and shouting questions to the lucky chosen one. Where are they from? Do they like it? It isn't too spicy for them? No ma'am, it's perfect. Our ajumoni even threw in a few raw oysters "service!" (that means free).

We found a sea monster octopus downstairs before dinner as well. It was enormous and the lady kept trying to get us to grab the poor thing's legs. Look at the size of those suckers! She also handed Shannon and Ryan a hapless little friend to hold.

Upstairs we were also success. It's hard to say if we found the best restaurant, but it was more and better food than the place we'd tried with David and Duck, and it was 10 bucks cheaper to boot. Below is the Jagalchi restaurant symbol. I'd say the ajumoni is amazingly accurate, but I doubt the fish are so happy. An aside: it's really common to have the food animal that a restaurant serves as a mascot for the place, usually all smiles to be your dinner. But in the US I think every attempt is made to ignore the fact that what you're eating is an animal. Strange cultural difference resulting in cute signs in Korea.

The spread our lady served was fantastic and I got her card and she memorized my name so I could call and make reservations when Mom and Frank get here. Only 3 more days!
Great job.

Jess