Hi all,
Today’s dish is jjukkumi gui – Grilled spicy baby octopus!
Thanks to our friends in Busan that brought us to a very popular seafood restaurant among locals. The place was busy and the atmosphere very easy going! We loved this place from the first moment we entered it!
We started how lunch ordering jjukkumi (쭈꾸미) – baby octupus marinated in spicy sauce. JJukumi is a specie of octupus, smaller in size, that is very common along the coast of South Korea. Its nutritional content, flavor and easy availability, made it one of the favorite sea food dishes across the country. In this restaurant after being marinated, the baby octopuses were cooked on the charcoal grill outside the restaurant and then served (see pictures below).
This dish is very spicy but the taste is simply mouth-watering!To reduce the spicyness of the dish you can choose from a big selection of side dishes. Together with jjukumi we were served with tofu soup, soup with white radish and cod, korean pancake with shrimps (록빈), watery kimchi and tofu in spicy sauce. We had also garlic, perrilla and cabbage leaves for the usual wrapping!
After finishing one plate of baby octopuses we ordered another one since we finished it very quickly and ordered some more dishes such as rice with soybean sprouts (콩나물밥 Kongnamul Bap). Simple but delicious!
As for drinks we ordered Makgeolli (rice wine – 막걸리): its a perfect match with this kind of spicy food!
Stay tuned for the next tasty experience. In the next post we will talk about Konguk-su (noodles in soy milk)!