In May I finally had a bit of free time, so I hastily put together a trip to Jeju. I only started getting ready two weeks before leaving, and booking a hotel turned out to be really hard. Phoenix Island, where I’d originally wanted to stay, and most of the other popular hotels had nothing left at a decent level of room. Booking a pension instead didn’t seem like a good idea with a food trip in mind. After days of digging through countless Jeju tourism sites, I found what was just about the last hotel room left on a site called Ijeju, booked it, and got to make the trip without any trouble.
We arrived in Jeju late on Friday evening, dropped our bags in Tapdong in the old part of Jeju City, and then headed over to New Jeju. I’d heard that most people visiting Jeju take a hotel in New Jeju – the city hall and government offices are over there and it’s the busy part of town, so there’s more to eat as well – but in my case the next morning’s schedule started in Tapdong, so I stayed at a hotel in Tapdong. Looking back, the distance isn’t that great either way, so it probably wouldn’t have made much difference.
While wondering what to eat first on day one, I decided it had to be Jeju black pork after all. These days Jeju black pork specialists have sprung up everywhere, so eating good black pork isn’t hard even in Seoul, but I still needed to check what the meat tastes like eaten on Jeju itself. There are countless famous black pork places on the island, and out of those I went with Dondaepyo, recommended by a member of Epicure (thanks, Nok-x and Ok-x~). The neighbourhood is a quiet residential area so parking isn’t difficult, but since drinking was likely, a taxi seemed the better idea.
The grill at Dondaepyo
Jeju-style, there’s meljeot – salted anchovy dipping sauce – sitting in the middle. It’s a familiar sight in Seoul these days too.
Banchan and bokbunja wine
Bokbunja doesn’t really go with black pork, but I didn’t fancy soju or makgeolli, so I ordered it.
Doenjang jjigae
It had an egg in it, and the broth somehow tasted a little like ramyeon soup powder, but it was tasty all the same. I wonder how they make it..
This is the sort of meat they bring out.
As I remember it, the meat on the right is ogyeopsal, skin-on pork belly, and the left is pork collar.
Close-up
Lovely colour~
Broken down
Coming along nicely. Neither the way you eat it nor the quality of the meat was much different from a Seoul grill house.
The rolled-omelette show
They use the fat that renders off the meat to make you a rolled omelette. I thought it was a neat trick, but since the thick cuts of pork take a good ten minutes to cook through, having something to eat in the meantime keeps you from getting bored.
Done
The taste wasn’t as special as I’d expected – it just tasted like a rolled omelette. The omelette is ready right about when the pork has nearly finished cooking, so I polished it off quickly and then ate meat like mad. The quality of the meat wasn’t far off the level of a good place in Seoul, but the way the fat melted away smoothly with no off-flavours really was something else. That made the ogyeopsal taste even better. With black pork specialists in every neighbourhood in Seoul these days, I’d been wondering whether going all the way to Jeju to eat Jeju pork was the right call, and my conclusion was that for ogyeopsal it is absolutely worth it.
Holding my full stomach as we walked to the place I’d picked for round two, I noticed that the chestnut trees were in blossom on Jeju. In Japan they bloom in early May, taking over from the cherry blossoms as the sign of spring, but Jeju seems to run a week or two later. The mainland is later still. Somehow it brought back memories of living in Japan and made the Jeju trip that much more enjoyable.