Grilled Shellfish Lunch

Today's adventure was just excellent.  Good food, good scenery, good company.

First, we headed out towards Incheon using the new bridge that was just completed (the Incheon Long Bridge). According to Wikipedia, it is 7.6 miles long, and is apparently the longest bridge in Korea and the 7th longest bridge in the world based upon a quick Google search..  Once we crossed over to Incheon, we headed towards the airport and then to a small town nearby that has a shellfish restaurant.

This place is a covered area attached to a house/building, with a dirt floor, buckets to put the shells in, and toilet paper hanging from support beams throughout the restaurant.

At our table was a very rusted bottle opener attached to the table itself.


Lunch!!  We had oysters, clams (several types), scallops, mussels, and a couple of other things I didn't recognize (but they all tasted really good).  All were placed on the grill.  What they failed to mention is that for safety, you should be wearing safety goggles and heat resistant clothes.  As the shells heat up, they tend to fire off chunks of shell, or hot liquids.  In the foil wrapped packets are the oysters and some clams.  We also had ttoekbokki with seafood, which is a dish containing rice cakes cooked in a red sauce.  This version also had some vegetables in it.  The restaurant provided gloves for each diner to use to hold hot items.  These also had a bit of a grip to them, which assisted when trying to remove stubborn tasty bits from hot shells.


We also had peel and eat shrimp.  No question about freshness here -- these were jumping about as they were put on the fire.  They were grilled on a bed of salt.


The final course was hand cut noodles with clams.  The broth here was deceptive -- it doesn't look spicy, but it definitely had a delayed kick to it.  Most likely due to the peppers floating around in it.  Hand cut noodles are rolled out and then cut by hand.  This soup was absolutely filled with clams.  Yum.


We also had the obligatory kimchi and vegetable dishes.  The kimchi was excellent, had a nice bite to it, with a touch of sweet flavor.  One of the best I've had in a while.