Myunggebawi hwejip (명게바워 횟집)

Location: Kangneung, South Korea

Category: Korean, seafood

Price: $$$ (~15,000 W only because we didn't order a lot)

Food: C

Atmosphere: A

Service: B
Overall: B-

Review: I went to Kangneung, near the coast, this past weekend with my friends Hanna, Lisa, Niki, Ludolf and Jin and had a great time on the beach.  With regards to this specific restaurant, location-wise, this fish place was the closest place to our hotel so we had a quick lunch there.  The restaurant had a great view:

as you can see, the restaurant was literally right on the beach, we decided to sit outdoors in the patio area and enjoy the nice cool ocean breezes.  However, I was a bit disappointed with the food, as it seems overpriced and not as good as it should have been.  We ordered a grilled mackerel which was pretty delicious actually:

 The mackerel was cooked well, nice and tender and fatty.  We did find though that most of the grilled fish that we encountered in Kangneung was quite delicious, but I would say this was likely worth it, quite large, though a bit expensive (~W 15,000).  

Next we also ordered a meuntang, or spicy soup.  We ordered a large one for the whole group.  However, it was really expensive (~W 50,000) and it seemed that they just push up the prices because the view is so nice.  It was also too spicy to the degree that you couldn't really taste the different flavors in the soup.  We found later that a lot of places in the area give the meuntang as a service after ordering sashimi.  It was not a bad meal all in all, but comparatively with later meals, it didn't seem worth the price, particularly because later on on in the night, we negotiated all you can eat sashimi, grilled clams, and meuntang all for ~W 100,000, which was more than enough for 6 people to eat.  Here are some additional photos of the soup, which had all the necessary ingredients, just the flavoring was off:

here's a close up, where you can see the silver shield protecting our soup from the ocean wind

here's a close up in my bowl:

As you can see, the soup is quite red.  that in itself is not such a big deal, but it was so spicy you couldn't really taste any of the vegetables or fish or anything....and I eat spicy food pretty well!  

The really great thing about this place though was actually the panchan, the little side dishes.  They made some regional ones, potentially because it was low season and so they were trying to give better service than usual.  I always like trying different regional foods, and here they gave us some panchan from the sea, which was made out of seaweed, whichi is shown on the left here.

They also had another one that was made out of some mountain vegetable even though it looked like kenyip, which is commonly used in korean food.  This was also quite tasty.  

They had some kimchis as well, like kkakdugi, which I didn't really think much of honestly.  It was overripe and not very tasty.

So although this wasn't a rave review for the restaurant, it did have a great view, especially during the daytime.  Here is the contact info (sorry for the sideways image)