Sujebi Clam Soup • 수제비대합탕
I woke up on day 4 of my trip to one of those emergency alert you receive on your iPhone when the government wants to make an announcement. Heatwave warning was what the message said and people were recommended to stay indoors because the weather was gonna get really hot from 12 to 5pm. My friend told me this could be the hottest day of the summer up to date. I ended up taking on the warning pretty seriously and stayed in and did some work 'til about 5.30 or so and left the house to get some dinner.
This time I was joining Soo Zee and Leigh for dinner to try the Sujebi Clam Soup (수제비대합탕) that I never had before. Per Leigh's friend's recommendation, we went to a pojangmacha (대합탕에수제비포장마차) around Mok-Dong (목동) area cos they told me that apparently there's not a lot of place that sells this dish in an authentic settings. We ordered two portions of the sujebi clam soup and conch with vinegar seasoned vegetables (소라무침). The portion was huge. We're pretty sure we probably have been fine ordering just one portion of the soup to share. Anyways, the soup mainly consists of sujebi—dough flakes roughly torn by hand—and some seafood in the mix. After my first sip, I knew that this was way beyond my spicy limit level (I don't really eat spicy food fyi). The soup was good, but it was really really really spicy. I had to let it cool down first, ate the sujebi separately, then took little sips of the soup to cut down the heat. Or at least that was my effort to cut down the heat and spiciness but I don't think I succeeded. My tongue still felt like it was burning after every bite which lasted for a good 5 minutes or so. The cold cider we ordered kinda helped to relieve the spiciness a little bit. And by a little bit, I mean for like 5 seconds. Then the burning sensation came back again.
When the second dish came, I took a break from the soup and tried the conch dish cos, after testing it first for me, Soo Zee told me that it's not as spicy as the soup. And she was right. It wasn't too spicy compared to the soup and I actually quite enjoyed it. I probably could eat just that with a bowl of rice and call it a good meal. At some point, we are back to eating the soup again and me and Soo Zee were kinda struggling with the spiciness while Leigh was still pretty cool and composed since she handles spicy food better than we do. Soo Zee told me that we are doing that one saying that Koreans have for the summer season—이열치열—which means fight fire with fire. It literally felt like I was at war. A heat and spiciness war to be percise.
Overall, apart from the spiciness, it was a great meal and experience. I think people who like spicy food will love this soup. I just never knew that I could felt that tired after a meal. Well, make sense right since it's a fire fight after all. (p.s: I ended up getting a bingsu after this meal to cool down my stomach. I think fighting fire with (shaved) ice might works better for me in this heatwave ;P)
Bonus story: the owners gave us a gyeran mari (계란말이)—Korean rolled omelette—on the house right before we leave. We were really thankful but also already so full and afraid we couldn't finish it. So we ended up giving it to the table behind us so it won't go to waste and apologize to the owners for not being able to eat it. The locals around here are really nice and awesome.
