In May, the Mugyo-dong branch of Cheung Kee Noodle House launched Cantonese dishes and ran a promotion to celebrate: 20% off the entire new seafood-restaurant menu. There was no way I was letting that chance slip by, so I rounded up the core crew and went.

Front entrance

They had proudly put up a signboard announcing the launch of Cantonese cuisine. The presence alone was enough to get my hopes up.

Fish tanks

Hong Kong-style seafood restaurants like this are fairly common abroad, but this seems to be the first in Korea. Part of the fun is looking at the tank yourself, picking the fish you will eat and deciding how it should be cooked, and Cheung Kee is not quite there yet (though I suspect they would do most things if you asked). Still, just having a place in Korea where fresh fish is killed on the spot and cooked Cantonese-style is something to be grateful for.

Not only at Cheung Kee, but at any seafood restaurant, it is a good habit to check the tanks first to decide what to eat. That day the lobsters and rockfish looked extremely fresh.

You cannot go full throttle from the start, so we eased in with some Yantai kaoliang.

The dedicated Yantai kaoliang decanter (?) and glasses were really cute.

Glass

A quick one down the hatch before the food arrives.

Side dishes

They were fine on their own, but they also made a nice light nibble before the dishes came out.

Garlic-chip shrimp

Plump shrimp buried in a heap of crunchy garlic chips. Well seasoned, and the shrimp themselves tasted superb. We ate the shrimp first and later spooned the leftover garlic chips over rice.

BBQ pork

Even with the seafood-restaurant concept, it is not seafood only. We tried a dish called BBQ pork, and the sauce had soaked nicely into the meat, so it was delicious. A perfect drinking snack.

Ginger and scallion stir-fried lobster

This dish deserves to be called the house signature. It seems to be the one they put the most care into, and the cooking itself was great, but the lobster that day was in wonderful shape. The meat packed inside was so sweet. I have had lobster like this only a handful of times in my life. I marvelled at it right to the end.

Garlic steamed scallops

Scallops topped with glass noodles, like japchae noodles, and sauce. The owner strongly recommended it, so we ordered it, and the scallops were fresh and the sauce on top was tasty too.

Stir-fried gai lan with garlic

The old menu already had a blanched gai lan dish, but stir-fried it had even more flavour. Change the cooking method and the taste gets better too.

Rice over garlic chips.

It was so good I shovelled it in. This alone was enough of a drinking snack.

Shaoxing wine brought over from Taiwan

With the owner’s permission, we brought out a Shaoxing wine that a friend had sponsored, carried straight over from Taiwan. Even the case looked seriously classy.

On the rocks

It tasted far smoother than the Shaoxing wine you usually find. The owner suggested drinking it on the rocks, so I tried it that way, but straight seemed better, so after the first glass I drank it neat.

Cantonese steamed fish

The other house signature, steamed rockfish, arrived. Since it had been swimming in the tank until a moment ago, the flesh was firm and sweet. I asked for extra coriander and mixed the doubanjiang sauce into my rice, and it felt like being in China. Not that I have been there yet..

After all those dishes we still felt something was missing, so we ordered some noodles too.

Wonton noodles

Cheung Kee’s wonton noodles are always the best.

Beef noodles

Noodles topped with beef tendon. Saltier than the wonton noodles, but with drinks it might actually be the better choice.

Lao you mian

The broth was on the slightly spicy side. They said it was about to be added to the menu, and it had all sorts of ingredients we had eaten so far, like BBQ pork, peanuts and gai lan. Calling it the sum of everything Cheung Kee does would be a stretch, but I liked being able to enjoy the piquant broth and hearty toppings that the wonton noodles do not have.

After eating so very well at Cheung Kee, we moved on to Angel’s Share in Hongdae for round two.

Rhubarb crumble pie

We grabbed a spot on the courtyard side and brought in a few pies from Peace Piece; the rhubarb crumble pie was a bit tart.

Pecan pie

The pecan was really good too. A wonderful pie shop. So lucky that it opens at night.

Balalaika

A cocktail with an unusual name; I remember it tasting light and refreshing.

Probably a highball

After a hot meal, we cooled off with highballs too.

Aultmore 29yr, Adelphi Selection

Around this point I brought out a bottle of whisky: Aultmore 29 Year Old from Adelphi Selection. Adelphi Selection is an independent bottler highly regarded for selling small quantities of top-quality whisky. Aultmore is a small distillery owned by Dewar’s; there are almost no official releases, and only the occasional bottling through bottlers like Adelphi. Production is so small that the amount available on the market is a handful at best, and I bought this one on impulse, purely by chance, without knowing anything about it.

The difference between wine and whisky is that with wine the ratings are more or less settled, so taste, ratings and price mostly line up, whereas in the world of whisky that formula does not work outside official bottlings. Hardly anyone properly rates the countless independent bottlings, and how far those ratings can be trusted you cannot know without drinking them yourself. If you open one and it is good, great, but plenty of the time it is not, so it is a gamble. Which is exactly why the joy of landing a good whisky is so great.

The whisky that has moved me most so far is Rosebank 25 Year Old. I only drank it once, but I have long remembered its power and aroma, and the Aultmore we opened this time was on that level. Though it is more of a citrus-and-butter style. It surprised me all over again that even after Rosebank 25 vanished from the market, you can still meet a whisky this wonderful. The world is wide, and there is still much to learn in the world of whisky.

In the movie Sideways there is a line about how you do not open a good wine on a special day; the day you open that wine becomes the special day. Drinking this whisky, I felt this day had become a little more special. Those who shared the bottle with me that night will probably understand the feeling. And since it has already disappeared from the market, we will never drink the same whisky again, which may make it even more special than wine.

Round three at Saemaeul Sikdang

Still not done drinking, we went into a nearby restaurant that stays open late, had one last round, and parted ways. From Cheung Kee at the start to the final wrap-up, this was an impromptu meetup that satisfied on every count, and I think it will stay in my memory for a long time.

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