We were walking around Hyeopjae Beach on Jeju Island looking for somewhere to eat when we stumbled upon this cozy seafood restaurant. It was a very casual place, but it seemed popular with the locals. Nobody spoke English, but the staff were very friendly, and we managed to place our order by pointing at different items on the menu.
We had a selection of raw fish and seafood served with lettuce and a spicy dipping sauce, so you could make your own lettuce wraps. It was delicious. We also had seaweed soup and a plate of grilled shellfish, which were also very tasty. After a while we started noticing that people at the other tables kept ordering something that looked like a fish coming straight off the grill. We got curious and asked the staff if we could also have whatever the other guests were having, but they politely gestured that we couldn’t.
That made us even more curious about what that secret, locals only delicacy could be, so we asked again, and once again the answer was no. But we kept insisting, and finally they reluctantly took our order.
A few minutes later a plate with a grilled fish head arrived at our table. The staff were standing nearby, almost apologetically, waiting for our reaction. It was obvious that they hadn’t really wanted to serve it to us because they assumed we wouldn’t like it.
We tried not to laugh and silently agreed that it would be embarrassing not to eat the fish head now that we had insisted so much on having it. As it turned out, it wasn’t bad at all. The meat around the cheeks was delicious and the skin was nice and crispy, so we actually ate everything except for the eyes.
And here’s a shorter version of the video:
