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Monday, December 27, 2010

Eating live octopus at Noryangjin Fish Market



Bargaining for your live octopus at Noryangjin is half the fun.
You can also read this post at www.goneseoulsearching.com
  
    Eating live octopus in Korea is a delightfully scary and delicious experience. The best place to experience eating raw fish (sannakji hoe), and especially raw live octopus (낙지) is none other than the famous Noryangjin Seafood Market in Seoul.
    Noryangjin is one of Korea's largest fish markets with a raw fish market operating 24 hours a day 365 days a year. After arriving at the Noryangjin market from subway line No. 1, I was overwhelmed by the amount of seafood that this enormous building houses. Just looking at the billions of pounds of sea food got me wondering if there are any fish left in the sea at all (and I am no animal rights activist)!

Huge tanks of clams are among hundreds of types of seafood at Noryangjin.
  Once at Noryangjin you will see hundreds of tanks of fresh octopus. Simply wander up to one of the stalls and ask how much (Eolmayeyo). A medium size octopus about the size of your hand should run you about 10,000 won. If you want to bargain with the fish dealer simply hesitate alot and then say gga gga ju se yo , which means discount. The "gga gga" is pretty much pronounced "ka ka" like poop, with a strong emphasize on the first "ka." The fish dealer will be very impressed that you said this, and will most likely drop their price immediately

A view of Noryangjin seafood market at 1:30 am on a cold Friday morning.
   After purchasing your octopus, head on over to one of the many hidden and often underground restaurants in the market. Sometimes the fish dealer will take you right there which happened in my case. At the restaurant, they will wash and serve up the raw and wiggling octopus with some tangy sauces and lettuce for a cheap price.

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Creative Commons License  Gone Seoul Searching by Marie Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at goneseoulsearching@gmail.com.

1 comment:

  1. Marie, Mom (Aunt Lynda) told me I had to see the video of you eating live octopus and I found it. Wow! You are brave. When I was stationed on Guam, I tried a variety of Asian cuisine which I found to be pretty delectable, but I'm not sure if I could do the live thing. I'm really enjoying reading through your blog. Keep it up!

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