What i eat in a week in jeju, korea! 🦑🍽 a foodie's guide to the best cafes, restaurants & markets

About two months ago, my family went to Korea and spent a week in Jeju-do, a small island off the coast of Korea. We're all huge foodies and so the entirety of this trip was dedicated to eating at the best spots around Jeju. Literally, we went around the entire island in search of the best cafes, markets, and restaurants. Although honestly, you can never really go wrong with food in Korea. And so join me in a week of eating in one of the world's most beautiful places, Jeju Island. So windy! For our very first meal in Jeju, we started off with a bang at this restaurant that was only about a 10-minute walk away from our Airbnb. We got the braised cuttle lass fish special, which was honestly way too much food for the three of us, but the fish was very fresh and I also got to try peanut makgeolli for the first time, aka peanut rice wine, a Jeju specialty, and it was delicious. One thing that I noticed is a lot of the restaurants in Jeju have very limited menus, but everything is so good. A lot of the ingredients are fresh and seasonal, and so even simple dishes are really flavorful and just chef's kiss. This blue crab roast tteokbokki was divine. So creamy and rich with the perfect amount of spice, and honestly, I'm still thinking about this, guys. The sauce is insane! This cafe is super cool and kind of just set a precedent for how much attention people put into the details and ambiance of a space in modern Korean design. This cafe specifically was renovated from an old factory, and the floors are all laid out with Jeju volcanic basalt. I got a lemon shakerado, which surprisingly was delicious, refreshing, and not too sweet, but we're not gonna talk about that scone. For dinner, of course, we had to get Korean barbecue, but not just any Korean barbecue. This is Jeju black pork. Again, it's a Jeju specialty, and it's known for being like the wagyu of pork, but personally, I think what really set this restaurant apart was the side dishes, like this abalone paste, as well as the fermented cabbage that we ate with the pork. Not to be dramatic, but all the ingredients work together in like perfect harmony, and it was probably one of the best meals that I ate while I was in Jeju. Breakfast of champions. What are you doing? I have to include everything, otherwise it's fake. Very hot today, and very sticky. We asked for good weather, but be careful what you wish for. Because it was so hot this day, we got makguksu, which is cold buckwheat noodles. I got the spicy one, and my god, my mouth is watering just looking at this. The ground sesame seeds give it a really nice nutty and savory flavor, which balances spicy and slightly sweet sauce. Again, the cafes in Korea don't play. I feel like I was walking onto a movie set or something at this place called Inn's Mill, which had like a desert theme going on. I don't even know. Their specialty though is desserts made with barley, a type of grain that's known for its nutty flavor. Hot bingsu, boricha ice cream, iced americano. Jeju-do is known for their oranges, and so all year round, even though it's not orange season right now, they are so good, so sweet and juicy. I even bought like an orange hat as a souvenir. Take the gim, and then you put every ingredient. If you're in the Seogwipo area and are looking for a chill, vibey place to get some drinks and top-notch anju, Masiorum is definitely the place to go. It's more of a pub than a restaurant, and yes, I was with my parents dressed like a five-year-old, but the food was really good. I mean, just take a look at that bite. Again, very fresh. I got this hat yesterday. Lunchtime! This restaurant literally had only three things on the menu. Kalguksu, aka knife-cut noodles, abalone porridge, and water dumplings. Bomal kalguksu is another Jeju specialty, and this place was really well known for it, and even though I'm personally not the biggest fan of kalguksu in general, it was still really good. In the afternoon, we visited Osulloc Tea Museum. Osulloc is a really well-known tea brand in Korea, and so this place also had a cafe inside. I got this sunset egg drink, which was very nice and refreshing, and I also shared this matcha cheesecake with my parents. There's also this huge Innisfree store with another cafe inside. It was so pretty, like, this was all just skincare, and I ended up buying a lot of gifts for my friends back home. These are all green tea leaves. I was craving tonkatsu for dinner, and so at the end of the day, we went to a tonkatsu restaurant called Basak, which literally translates to crispy in Korean, and like the name suggests, because they make the panko fresh every day from their own bread, the coating was super light and crispy. After spending the morning hiking and visiting the Cheongdong waterfall, we went to get burgers for lunch at this restaurant that was American-themed, which I personally thought was pretty funny. I know you might be thinking, why would you get burgers at an American-themed restaurant when you can get that in America? But the thing is, is this the type of food that you would get Like the burger restaurant, this cafe was Greece-themed and had the prettiest drink and space to take photos of the drinks. The funny thing is, these super aesthetic cafes are in, the most random places around the island, and this particular one actually had a whole tangerine grove next to it, and you could actually pick the tangerines if you wanted. They had baskets and shears and everything. And finally, we ended the day off with a beautiful sunset at this small little ramen restaurant where I had the most gourmet ramen that I will probably ever have in my life. This morning I stayed home, so my parents got me takeout for lunch. It's wrapped like a present. Comes with pickles, hot sauce, and parmesan. Pepsi. and if you didn't know, mackerel is usually eaten fully cooked because it tends to have a very fishy taste, but because they literally catch and kill the fish to order, it was so fresh and didn't taste fishy whatsoever. So this was alive like 10 minutes ago. Rest in peace. Also, the owner of this restaurant was really hospitable and showed us the best way to eat the fish, and he did this for every group that came into the restaurant. He was just so passionate, and I thought that was really cool. They also used the parts of the fish that we didn't eat like the bones and tail to make the soup, which was simple but flavorful. On day six of our trip, we visited this huge traditional market that happens once every five days, and they had thousands of goods. They're also selling a lot of food, so after strolling around, we got some classic Korean street food which really hit the spot. Blue Bottle is one of the only chain establishments that we went to while we were in Jeju, but they also had a couple of items that were only sold in Jeju, like this coffee jelly. Afterwards, we went to Snoopy Garden, which is a peanut comic exhibition, and I was so excited for this place, and of course, they had a cafe, although we didn't get anything because we were too full. We ended the day at this really homey restaurant that served classic Korean food, like spicy pork stir-fry. The owner was so kind, and there seemed to be a lot of locals at this place in particular, so it was a really nice environment. On day seven, we took a day trip to Udo, another tiny little island right off the coast of Jeju. Right when we got there, we ate lunch at this specialty jjamppong place, and I swear, this was the best jjamppong that I have had in my life. Although we waited like over an hour, it was definitely worth it because it was packed with fresh seafood, and it was also really unique. Like, I've never tried cream jjamppong before, and it was delicious. Udo is also known for their peanuts, and so of course, we had to get some peanut ice cream. Again, it did not disappoint. Udo is so small that you can actually bike around the whole island in like two hours, and so we spent the rest of the day exploring and enjoying the nature. For dinner, we went to this tiny little Italian fusion restaurant that was run by the owner slash chef, and he was the only one working there when we went. Honestly, we had eaten so much good food that everything was kind of blurring together at this point, but of course, the food never misses. I got the rock shrimp pasta, and my mom got the abalone risotto, and it was so good. I was very close to literally licking the bowl clean. If you thought it couldn't get any better, think again. Although we waited for a really long time at this restaurant, the bibimbap definitely made it into the top three for me. It was packed with nutrient-dense ingredients that were, again, incredibly fresh, and just worked harmoniously with the rest of the ingredients. Jeju green mandarin tea. It's pretty good. And finally, for our last dinner in Jeju, we went to a restaurant specializing in jjukumi, aka webfoot octopus. The chewiness of the octopus combined with the spicy sauce and the cheese was just perfect. Wiener is gonna put rice in here and mix it all together to make like fried rice. Today's our last full day in Jeju. We go back to Seoul tomorrow. We ate so much good food that I'm very excited to look back on all the footage because I honestly lost track of everything that we ate. But as always, thank you guys so much for watching. I really hope you enjoyed this video. I will see y'all next time. Bye!