Steaming Bowl of Clams Golmokgil is one of my favorite places to go in winter, but my friends Suji, Kyu, and Sean wanted to eat them in August. I'm cool with that and luckily the clams at Golmokgil are still delicious and plump in Summer. There are mussels and scallops and giant scallops and razor clams and conches and many other types of shellfish in the giant bowl. They steam at the table as you can pick out your favorite vittles and dip them in the vinegared chili sauce.  It's soooo...good.  The shellfish steam in a colander and the drippings make a rich clam broth that is later used to make noodle soup. It's one of the best meals you can get in Seoul! Highly recommend! Gol Mok Gil 70-1 Nonhyeon-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul South Korea 02-544-8358 PS. After Dinner we checked out the band at the Grand Hyatt. Always a great time! Clam Broth Noodle Soup The Band at the Grand Hyatt View Larger Map

Originally Published in the February Issue of Seoul Selection Magazine. By Daniel Gray Finally, I have found some modern cuisine in Korea that doesn’t date back to the Shilla or Chosun dynasty with roots to royal court cuisine. Steamed shellfish and grilled shellfish don’t have a long history. According to food historian, Professor Jia Choi of Ewha University, “it became popular in the early 90’s and died out around 96-97. When they were popular, you could see these restaurants everywhere and everyone thought it was going to be the next big thing, but then they just died out.” So I asked Professor Choi, why she thinks they died out and she said, “Restaurants need to do business all year long and not many people want to eat shellfish in the summer so…it’s not a good concept.” In winter, I get a hankering for shellfish. It’s when they are in season and freshest. Normally, I prefer grilled, but a friend introduced me to steamed shellfish over at Gyomokgil in Nonhyun-dong and it was a ...

A Pot of Steaming Shellfish at Gol Mok Gil Scallop Snail Grilled Shellfish Fire and Shell Clam Bath Pictures are taken with my Panasonic G2 Camera with 20mm lens.

Retro Oven Pain De Chocolate It was an excellent foodie weekend as I had to quickly do some stories for a couple of writing assignments that I had so I had to stomp all over Seoul to get pictures, do interviews, take notes, and eat. Above, you can see the Pain de Chocolate from Retro Oven over by Gangnam-gu chong Station. It was flaky and delicious and oh, so chocolatey. You can see a picture of Chef Pack below holding up some of his other goodies. I also went to Flora in Hyojadong for some black bean calguksu- it was alright. The highlight of the weekend was steamed shellfish at Gyomokgil! I'll be putting the information on how you can find these places soon- but I have to get back to work for now. Sooo... Where did you eat? How was it? Retro Oven's Chef Pack

Steamed Shellfish at Gol Mok Gil in Seoul, Korea My buddy Sean Choi from Groove Magazine is a Foodie's Foodie. He knows what's good in Korea and he often goes out of his way to find excellent, local Korean places. On Wednesday Night, he had a meet up with the writers of Groove Magazine and he was nice enough to invite me. If you might recall, I used to be their dining editor for a while, but I had to move on because I got too busy with work. Anyway, the place he took us to was called Gol Mok Gil (길목길). It's a bit of a pain to find, but it's totally worth it. The house specialty is Steamed Shellfish (조개찜 48,000 for large). Here you get a large variety of mussels, razor clams, scallops, and a variety of cockles. Great stuff and you get it all in a giant pot so it creates a rich clam broth which is later used to make a Knife-cut Noodle Soup. I also recommend you get an order of their potato pancakes (감자전). I later found out these came service- but I think they are i...