Sambo Sikdang in Jeju: Great Abalone Hot Pot
While in Jeju, I bought an Olle Trail passport, thinking I might walk the trails and get a certificate. After buying it, I looked for a place to eat nearby and heard there was a restaurant known for its great ttukbaegi (earthenware hot pot), so I braved the wind to check it out. (The wind in Jeju can blow so hard sometimes that it's actually scary.)
The name is Sambo Sikdang. Jeju is famous for its Samda (Three Abundances), Sammu (Three Lacks), and Sambo (Three Treasures), and they chose Sambo for the restaurant's name. They tweaked the definition of the three treasures in their restaurant description to suit them better, but since they all count as natural resources, it's not entirely wrong.
Judging by the exterior alone, it looks so old that you'd think it's either an incredibly delicious hidden gem or a terrible place. Once you go inside, you can tell that while the interior isn't brand new, it was renovated much more recently than the outside suggests.
It must be a popular spot because there were people waiting, but luckily, a large group left and a seat opened up for me right away.
I sat down and looked at the menu, and the prices were pretty steep. At 16,000 KRW for a single hot pot, I seriously debated whether to leave or not, but I figured I should try it since I was already there, so I ordered the jeonbok ttukbaegi (abalone hot pot). While other restaurants usually get low ratings because of the characteristically gruff Jeju service, this place gets low ratings for its price-to-value ratio. Looking at the menu, I felt like I'd give it a 1-star rating too if the food was even slightly disappointing.
Hearing the Jeju dialect bursting out from the kitchen and the serving staff, it seemed like everyone working there was a Jeju local. There was one person who looked like a foreigner, but I wasn't entirely sure.
The food arrived shortly after. I tried a bit of the side dishes first, and they were seasoned just right—definitely not a place that can't cook. The bubbling hot pot looked incredibly spicy. I wondered if I had made a mistake while waiting for it to cool down a bit. I nervously took a spoonful of the broth, and thankfully, it wasn't spicy; instead, it had a refreshing, rich seafood flavor. I read somewhere that they use MSG, but whether it's Miwon or Dashida, I'm all for it if it makes the food taste this good.
I scooped up an abalone, and it was noticeably larger than the ones you find in Chinese restaurants or standard crab soups. Seeing three large abalones in the bowl made me think the price might actually be justified. Abalones at other places sometimes have a slight smell, but these were scrubbed clean, so they were light in color and tasted incredibly fresh without any off-flavors. The Manila clams included on the side were also quite large. The mussels, however, were pretty small, as if they hadn't eaten well growing up.
Eating it with rice, I scraped the bottom of the hot pot so hard I almost poked a hole in it. The portion is definitely small for the price, but the refreshing, slightly spicy broth packed with seafood flavor and the large abalones left me feeling great after the meal.
