Haewoori sashimi restaurant in Seoul

Since T-shirt weather is approaching I am facing up to the sad fact that I should lose some weight. So of course now all I can think about is FOOD and all my favourite restaurants …especially the ones that I shouldn’t go to since I’m supposed to be on a diet. 🙁 But it’s still ok to eat sashimi, isn’t it? (not sure about all the soju and beer that goes with it though ….) One of my favourite sashimi restaurants in Seoul is 해우리 Haewoori. It’s different to other sashimi restaurants because…

their sashimi sets are served with a range of seaweed and kimchi as well as the usual lettuce and sesame leaves to wrap the sashimi.

It’s a very Korean way to eat sashimi. You can eat the sashimi just with a soy sauce or chilli sauce dip or wrap it with kelp seaweed with mustard leaf kimchi on the side. I think this is great diet food. Tasty and healthy. Love it

There are various set menus with different prices. We chose a menu for about 45, 000 won per person. This course begins with a warm bowl of Korean miso soup (below right) with radish leaves and a cold bowl of seaweed (below left).

Then came a plate of seafood: cooked prawns, raw sea pineapple (멍게 monge) fish roe, scallops.

The sashimi in this set is cut in 세꼬시 (seggoshi) style – so cut into long strips and unboned. (This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s regular sashimi too). Side dishes include other different cuts of sashimi, crab marinated in soy sauce, seasonal dishes, shellfish, and kimchi.

For me the seaweed is the unusual star at this restaurant. Here’s a picture of the seaweed from Haewoori’s website. The info on the site tells us that the three seaweeds are clockwise from the top – 꼬시래기 (ggoshiregi), sea string, 톳 (tot) a kind of brown algae, and 쇠미역, (suimiyok), seersucker kelp. They are rich in calcium fibre and minerals. Sea string also helps to rid the body of unwanted heavy metal toxins. And kelp is good for fighting high blood pressure and stress. It’s also a good diet food (that’s good news) and relieves constipation. 😕

Here are the three seaweeds as they were served in the restaurant (below left) along with a dish of fish roe, white kimchi, mustard leaf kimchi, and mushrooms (right). The seaweed plate can be refilled too! But even just one plate of seaweed is very filling, so I always leave the restaurant fuller than when I go for regular sashimi. I also feel exceedingly healthy and pleased with myself too. 🙂

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To eat the sashimi just make a wrap with whatever ingredients that you want – add seaweed, sashimi and a spicy fish and soy bean paste dip for a bit of a spicy kick. Delicious.

Another side dish is warm sweet potato pancake. Some of the sets come with tempura and grilled fish as well.

This is followed by a spicy mackerel and radish stew. The course also comes with maeuntang spicy fish soup and rice. But by this point we were too full to have that! But I could eat it right now though 🙁