Jagalchi Fish Market Part 3: A world of fish

Walking the wet aisles of Korea’s largest fish market and seeing all the live seafood wiggling hopelessly in tanks is an amazing experience. The smell wasn’t as bad as we’d been told and all my concentration was taken up by the sights around me. There were fish big and small, mounds of shellfish, and all [...]

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Jagalchi Fish Market Part 1: Slime eels

Photo by Anna Waigand When I first saw them they were just tubes of raw, pink flesh frantically writhing in a shallow red bowl. No skin, no scales, no head. Just a line of pink flesh with a white lattice of fat woven into it. In a couple of seconds, the slithering turned into an [...]

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Sea Bream is damn cheap

This is how much fresh sea bream we got for 5,000 won or approximately $4.17. This was our first fish purchase at the market. After watching some Korean women order fish and have them cleaned for them we were confident that if we pointed at a whole fish we wouldn’t be stuck trying to figure [...]

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Black plastic bags are confusing

I needed garlic for a sauce because every sauce in Korea requires garlic. Anna went into the fridge to grab the black plastic bag that had all the peeled garlic we bought from the market. She handed it to me and I started to massage the contents because they didn’t feel quite like garlic. I [...]

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