The official mineo (croaker) meetup of the Cyworld club Epicure, which comes around every summer, happened again this year. Thank you as always for setting up such a good table and inviting me.
Sea squirt
The sea squirt was unbelievably fresh, but with the menu still to come, it is best not to touch the free starters too much.
Cashews
All sorts of drinks came out that day, and cashews go well with any of them.
Mackerel
At any other gathering this would have been a rice thief, but that day it got rather left out in the cold.
Awamori cocktail
One of the group had brought back awamori from Okinawa and mixed cocktails for us right there. Just being able to drink something as exotic as awamori in Korea is quite an experience.
Sekkoshi (bone-in thin slices) and flounder
Even if you ate just this plate and went home, you would come out ahead. I cannot remember having flounder this springy and sweet many times. The problem, though, is that everything so far still counts as free starters.
Sponsored whiskey, Jameson
A whiskey you see all the time at duty free, and this was my chance to find out what it tastes like. Nothing fancy about it, but perhaps because it is matured in sherry casks, it is very sweet and easy to drink. Good for sipping lightly. You get to rack up all kinds of experience points, which is why I cannot skip these gourmet gatherings.
Macallan Select Oak
A 1L duty-free bottle, but the Macallan character is all there. It went down easily, and I guess whisky really is my thing.
Aged awamori
It was 35 percent. I managed to get a photo later on.
Whole steamed squid
This is also part of the free starters, but I ate it with relish. It really needs some of the innards in there to taste right.
Spicy whelk salad
Not something the restaurant serves; a member bought the ingredients and made it on the spot. That is the charm of a proper gourmet club meetup.
Langoustines
It had been a while, but as good as ever.
At last, the mineo jeon
Finally the main event. Once you have tasted this savoury richness, you cannot let a year go by without it. It was so good I had several plates, and you can pretty much count on it coming out non-stop until you are about to burst. It is because of dishes like this that you have to pace yourself.
A live octopus goes into the boiling broth.
It thrashed around like crazy.
The resulting blanched octopus
It tasted like concentrated essence of octopus. With this one plate alone the soju could have kept flowing forever.
Juan Gil
A wine sponsored personally by the owner-chef of Trattoria Molto, famous for its pasta in Apgujeong and even featured on TV, and it was excellent. People who know their food really do choose differently.
The wine I sponsored
Light in flavour, but it went well with the seafood. Wines like this are easy to match with food.
At last, the mineo jiri
It did not have the rich flavour I remember from before, and the innards were a bit lacking too. Apparently the croaker caught that day were on the small side. With mineo you need a big one to get plenty of the tasty parts, and I heard there were no big ones that day. A shame, but I still enjoyed it.
A few of the special cuts
The liver was a real delicacy. I did not get any sashimi this time, but missing the mineo sashimi is not a great loss. What I do find a little disappointing is that the tang (spicy stew) is as good as the jiri, but when eating at Maknae it rarely comes as tang. Well, for mineo tang I can always gather the members and go to Hwaseon Hoetjip in Incheon.
Seafood ramyeon to finish
No matter how close to bursting you are, it would feel wrong to skip the seafood ramyeon.
After all that, those heading to a second round went on, and I just went home.
A number of things have come up lately, and thanks to that my gourmet activities may be disrupted for a while. Not that visitors to the blog will notice much, since I have such a big backlog stored up.
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