I said I’d try to get a Seoul report out today but instead I have another report from Busan. I hope this does not offend you.

I reported on Friday on a seafood lunch eaten by the Jagalchi Market in the Nampo port area. This report is of a seafood dinner eaten elsewhere by the water in Busan. After a day of visits to film industry sites, I had our coach drop us all off by Gwangalli Beach in the early evening. The students scattered in all directions and our family took a long walk by the water before ending up at the well known Millak Hwe Town complex for dinner. This is a 10-story building with seafood vendors on the ground floor and restaurants on the floors above. You can purchase seafood of your choice downstairs and take it up to one of the restaurants to have them prepare it for you (you’ll pay a setup charge). Or you can also just choose to go up to one of the restaurants and order off their menu. This is probably the better move if you are in a small group and want to try a bunch of different things. At any rate, it’s what we chose to do.

We took the elevator up all the way to the 9th floor. I’m not sure why we didn’t go to the 10th but we wanted a good view of the beach and the Gwangan Bridge as the sun went down. There were two restaurants when we emerged from the lift. We flipped a mental coin and went into Wangppeokguk Hoetjip. It was still on the early side—many tables were occupied but tables by the windows overlooking the beach were available. We grabbed one of those and perused the menu.

This is an area that’s very popular with tourists and so it’s no surprise that the menu had English translations. We decided to get a set meal and add on a platter of hwe/hoe or sliced raw fish. I’m sorry to say that more than four months on, I cannot remember which size set meal and which size hwe platter we selected (both come in small, medium, large options). I can tell you that we added on three more dishes: corn cheese, which has sweet corn bubbling in cheese sauce; a green onion pajeon/pancake; and an order of gyeranjjim/steamed egg. Those dishes came out first and then the parade of seafood started.

On the table first were smaller bites and appetizers: these included boiled shrimp (with the shells and heads on) and some very nice soft tofu with topped with chilli paste seasoning. Then arrived a raw marinated trio: octopus, sea pineapple and abalone. I am the only one in the family who likes the iodine-heavy flavour of sea pineapple—probably on account of my long career of drinking iodine-heavy whiskies from Islay—and so I had this mostly to myself. Also on the table now were halibut nigiri and a very nice cold dish of noodles and raw fish in a spicy-sweet sauce. Then arrived the platter of hwe. This involved mounds of three kinds of fish. Please forgive me for the lack of exactness—communication with our server was a little difficult—but I think she said the three fish were rock fish, flounder and something with the wonderful English name of convict grouper. This was a lot of sliced raw fish but we managed to make it disappear. You might think this was it but you’d be wrong. The best part of the meal was yet to come: a large casserole of maeuntang or spicy fish stew made with a rock fish head and carcass. A very nice way to end.

For a look at everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it cost and to see what’s coming next.

Price? The reason I cannot tell you with a certainty what sizes of the two combos we got is that I uncharacteristically failed to photograph or save the receipt (though I think it’s possible that we just settled up at the counter and no receipt was actually forthcoming). But my credit card statement tells me we paid 165,000 won or just about $109 for all of the above. Looking at the menu prices for the things we got it then seems likely that we got the top or A set meal at 80,000 won and the smallest hwe platter at 60,000 won—the add-ons, beer and additional rice etc. would have brought us up to the total of 165,000. But, again, I cannot be sure.

Well, that’s all my reports from Busan on this trip—I will spare you another account of lunch eaten in the food hall at the Shinsegae mall (you can always look at my report on the 2024 version of that meal). If my programs run again in the spring of 2028, as currently scheduled, we’ll probably be back to Busan for another couple of nights—though there’s a chance we might go elsewhere next time. I do still have quite a few reports to come from Seoul though. I’m hoping to get done with them by the end of October, so I can get started with my reports from Hokkaido, which is where we went for a week’s holiday after our program ended in early June. At any rate, I’ll have another whisky review tomorrow, another report from Bombay in April on Tuesday, a report from the Twin Cities on Wednesday and another Seoul report on Friday. That’s the plan anyway. Let’s see how that goes.