Today we went to the Noryangjin Fish Market for the first time. It was an unbelievable, overwhelming experience.
First thing's first, I must describe the smell. It is the most potent, overpowering, completely saturating smell I have ever experienced. Now, I have never been to a trash dump, so I cannot imagine what that smells like. But the stench of fish was so complete in this hangar that I gagged a few times during our adventures and almost lost my appetite by the time we were going to enjoy our own seafood feast. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
The fish market in Seoul is gigantic. On the second floor there are several restaurants that will cook your fresh seafood. On the main floor, hundreds and hundreds of vendors are lined up in a huge hangar selling all sorts of seafood. Seafood like we've never seen before. There were buckets and bins and Styrofoam boxes full of creatures that none of us could identify. Octopi trying to escape only to be pushed back into their buckets, inky water swirling. Sea snails and worms wiggling and fluttering in water that was constantly replenished by hoses. Liquid fish guts, old sea water, and fish blood ran in rivulets off every surface, forming a rather unpleasant muck for us to walk through. I bought new shoes on the way home - my ballet flats were soaked through and I knew they were ruined beyond repair.
Unpleasantness aside, the fish market was an amazing sight. Once we got used to seeing unbelievable sights and the smell became tolerable (for me anyways, Nick and Brad did not have as much trouble acclimating) we marveled at the bustling, chaotic order that was the fish market. This was a serious place of business. Auctions were going on over a loudspeaker. Vendors would yell and motion for you to come close, pulling a fish out of their tanks to show off. Men, women, and children whirled around us buying all sorts of seafood...we watched live octopi thrown into black plastic bags to take home or fresh sashimi cut up on old wooden chopping blocks. And when I say fresh, I mean the fish was wiggling a minute ago. The vendors would take the chosen fish, throw it mercilessly on the ground (in the delicious looking muck, mind you) and smack it's head with a wooden stake that had a spike at the end. Half the time it would sever the fish's spine and they would immediately stop wiggling, their gills split open with a sickening thwack. We were taken aback at the nonchalant brutality. We don't get to see how the meat gets on our plates...but at the same time, we watched with a serious fascination. We couldn't wait to have one killed for our own feast.
After a few hours of examining each type of fish and random seashell filled with some random squishy creature, we decided it was time to choose our meals. We picked some enormous prawns, a king crab, and a "small size" sea bass. We picked our prawns first, had them weighed, and then unceremoniously dumped into a black plastic bag. Our crab was handed to us alive, in another black plastic bag filled with sea water.
Our fish we had to pick live out of a tank. The gentlemen who sold it to us was a pushy man. After we made our choice and he murdered our fish, he shoved us down the little alley that he had thrown our still twitching feast (we named him Flipper!) and a woman with large rubber gloves swiftly chopped off Flipper's head and ripped out some of his guts. She hosed the body down and then we argued with the man about taking the fish with us. We wanted to go upstairs and have it cooked in a restaurant of our choice. He wanted us to go to his friend's restaurant. Ultimately, we were the ones paying, so we got our way. The woman threw the body in one bag and the head in another. We went upstairs with our bags and found a restaurant that would cook all our seafood for a very nominal price. It looked clean and was crowded, and so we slid off our (now disgustingly foul) shoes and padded onto the heated wooden floors to sit traditional-style on the ground.
We indulged in our steamed prawns and king crab, dipping the fresh meat in soy sauce or red bean paste with freshly chopped garlic and parsley. We had Flipper "barbecued" crispy. The fish was flaky and had the most perfect mild taste. We also had Flipper's head thrown into a very spicy pepper soup. The soup had potatoes and onions, greens and mushrooms. The entire head (eyeballs, flippers and all the juicy parts) was boiled in the soup for over an hour as we ate the first three courses of our meal. By the time they brought it to our table, piping hot, the succulent meat was flaking off the bones. Four hours after we arrived at the fish market we made our way back to the subway, feeling full and satisfied. It was an amazing day.
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