Sushi in Sinchon

YOU need stamina for a weekend in Seoul. Tramping the streets of South Korea's capital usually guarantees complete exhaustion due to a detailed schedule of activities to squeeze every last bit of juice out of your time.
Thanks to a very thoughtful present from my brother Benton and the lovely Tess – two pedometers to answer the recurring question of, “Gosh I’m buggered, I wonder how much I walked today?” – we knew exactly how many steps we’d clocked (16,500) and why we needed a satisfying re-charge.

The problem with Seoul is that because you try different eateries every weekend, it’s almost impossible to head straight for a place you’d like to recommend. It’s a bit of a quandary, because I don’t enjoy delving into the unknown with visitors in tow, only to be sorely disappointed.
On Saturday night we were thoroughly wrecked, and rightly so after waking at 4.30am to be in Seoul by 7am for a tour of the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea.
So after checking into the reliable Prince Hotel, we ventured into the streets of Sinchon to seek out a place to enjoy one of Mo and R’s last meals in Korea.

Sinchon is a hip corner of Seoul, and one of a trifecta of university hangouts (Ewha and Hongdae being the other two spots, only a train stop away either side) which teems with funky young things in their 20s. There’s loads of coffee houses and bars, cute little boutiques selling pop art t-shirts and flouncy skirts, accessory street stalls and a slew of beauty shops.

Our culinary compass was undecided but we knew it couldn’t be galbi or anything remotely like bibimbap, as we’d had an embarrassment of the dish for lunch in Freedom Village or Tae-Song-Dong, a South Korean village in the borders of the DMZ.
Needing room for Haagen Daz, we settled on a decidedly posher version of sushi train. In Australia it seems our definition of sushi is quite wide and it doesn’t necessarily mean raw fish – that would be sashimi, or so I thought. Whenever people refer to sushi generally, it usually means rice rolls wrapped in seaweed filled with anything from teriyaki chicken to tuna and ginger.
Here, that is gim-bap, and sushi refers specifically to raw fish. Having previously figured out that point of difference, I was keen to better my initial experience with sushi, which involved an extremely grissly and stubborn piece of raw fish which refused to be masticated.

Sushi Inn (or, for the politically correct Romanisation from Hangul, Su-shi Eo-In) is a very light and bright simple space centred around the kitchen, where a handful of chefs whip up different kinds of sushi and other morsels in full view of diners, placing them on an enormous conveyor belt to endlessly seduce the appetite.

There was barely a seat free on our visit. People were taking great delight in selecting dishes, gauging their hunger by the stack of empty plates and sipping on green tea. (Each table had a hot water tap - very cool - and beneath the bar was a revolving belt of the most gorgeous Japanese cutlery to choose from).
We were ushered to a table adjoining the train, with Wes and I in chief position to do the picking – a difficult job when you have to sum up, in the few quick seconds before it passes you by, what it looks like and then do a quick reference check against the menu to check how much that particular coloured “plate” costs.

It was unusually expensive for Korea, with a few small pieces of sushi starting from AUD$2.50 and heading up towards $9 for more exotic morsels such as rock oysters.
We sampled various types with tuna, crab and prawns – all so delicate in taste and deliciously light and fresh, some with a kick of wasabi hiding beneath the meat.

We got excited when the waiter pointed out a coconut shell filled with “sherbet,” but alas his English was a tad befuddled – it turned out to be chilled thickened coconut cream. Not a totally unpleasant mix-up, though. It was quite divine, actually, though it was saddened a little by its time on the conveyer belt - the top spoonfuls were turning to liquid while the centre was still cold and firm.

Although it was a wee deviation from Korean dining, I think I would allow Sushi Inn to intrude on my official tour of Seoul. I'm going to file it under, "Back Up," for those times kim-chi jji-gae, rice and noodles will not cut the mustard.