갈치공장(galchi factory) — Restaurant in Jeju

Truly a gem of Jeju! The restaurant is situated right outside the sea, and you might even catch the haenyeos diving for the fresh seafood if you’re lucky🤿

The owner was extremely welcoming even to us foreigners, and tried his best to explain to us where they got their ingredients from, or how best to eat the items we ordered which we were grateful to receive.

We ordered the abalone with grilled butter and garlic, the abalone porridge, the abalone rice and the medium cutlass/silver-tail fish.

The fish is hands down one of the best I had in my life, and was so fresh and tender. It was incredibly plump and juicy, and seasoned lightly with salt, made it an easy swallow. As “service” each table was given the fried fish, was super crispy, and yet light tasting, without being oily at all.

The grilled abalone was crazy good, it really absorbed the butter well and was extremely succulent.

The abalone porridge and rice was extremely fragrant, filled lots of abalone🫶🏻

Apart from the dishes sold in the restaurant, we also loved the banchan provided in the restaurant.

Everything is locally sourced and handmade as much as possible. The seaweed used plucked straight from the ocean and was refreshing and tangy.

The salad’s dressing is made in-house with beets, with a sweet yogurt like base. The vegetables were super fresh and crunchy.

The kimchi is made fresh as well, and you can really tell from the taste as it was not overly fermented, but yet strong enough to provide a satisfying kick.

Our favourite banchan had to be the canola stems with carrots, tossed lightly in sesame oil. We all thought it was spinach, but the owner told us it was actually picked by themselves out from the gardens as well🤯

Overall, definitely a meal to remember, to recommend, and to come back for when we are...

Price is reasonable for the quantity of food served. Quality is reasonable but not the best we have tasted. Owner was exceptionally friendly when he knew that we are Singaporeans. He came to introduce the signature dishes and emphasized that their kimchi is different from other restaurants. They do not serve sashimi abalone which was a little disappointed, but they have grilled abalones. Place is clean and spacious. Ambiene was good as it is located at the coastal area. So...we paid for our food dutifully and left the restaurant. 15 - 20 minutes into our drive which was at least 15 km away and we were rushing for the next attraction, our driver received a call from the restaurant and we were told that we didn't pay for one dish, and we must go back and make the payment. The staff has forgotten to key in that particular dish. We didn't want our local driver to suffer any consequences as he was the one who made the reservation. And so, as law-abiding Singaporeans, we drove back all the way to pay for the shortage of 30,000won. Though we were given some candies for our effort, we were...

Came to Jeju for the black pork bbq, but stayed for the grilled cutlass fish!

This was our favourite meal here - a big statement coming from a lifelong meat lover. The seafood was incredibly fresh as they source it directly from a dedicated fishing boat and not wholesalers. Sea to plate concept. No middleman also means more reasonable prices.

We ordered the grilled abalone with butter, abalone rice, and large grilled cutlass fish. The fish and abalone were cooked to perfection and the natural flavours really came through, which is what we were looking for. The abalone rice also had a bold umami-ness flavoured by the abalone liver/gonads - we absolutely love this but it might be an acquired taste for non-Asian palates. Give it a try nonetheless!

The owner couldn’t stop reminding us that we had the biggest catch of the day (3ft) and we couldn’t thank him enough.

A must for anyone...