Hwasun-ri Jeju fish restaurant: bone-free galchi jorim, Sikgwa Hamkke

I'm on a Jeju trip at 31 weeks pregnant haha. If you're in Jeju you can't not eat galchi jorim (braised cutlassfish)!! There are so many galchi jorim places on the island, but we went to a spot near Sanbangsan called Sikgwa Hamkke.

Parking and a breakfast visit to Sikgwa Hamkke in Hwasun-ri

This is the exterior of Sikgwa Hamkke. We parked on the road in front of the building and went in for a meal. We were diligent and went for breakfast!

Inside it had that warm feeling of a place serving home-style Korean set meals!! Familiar and cozy.

You could tell they'd thought carefully about every little detail, and even the aprons were so pretty 👍

Ordering boneless galchi jorim for two: why no bones matters

This is Sikgwa Hamkke's menu. We ordered the boneless braised cutlassfish for two. Galchi jorim tastes great but picking out the bones can be a bit of a hassle sometimes — here they sell a boneless version outright, which was great.

Writing a receipt review gets you a free seasonal juice, so there was no reason not to!!

Starters: jellyfish salad, abalone and turban shell roe rice, fried cutlassfish belly

Jellyfish salad and abalone-turban shell roe rice came out first, and they were perfect as appetizers. A sweet-and-tangy salad and a savory roe rice cleansed the palate perfectly!

And then the freshly fried cutlassfish belly! This was genuinely so good T_T. Fresh out of the fryer and piping hot, eaten with sauce and onion it felt like a proper dish. With no bones, it was so easy to pick up piece by piece like a bar snack.

What side dishes come with the meal at Sikgwa Hamkke?

We only ordered one boneless cutlassfish stew, but so many side dishes came out that the table filled up in no time. Some Jeju restaurants are great for the main dish alone, but personally I love places where there's plenty to eat among the side dishes too 👍

Even before the main dish arrived, the number and quality of the side dishes covering the table was impressive.

Soy marinated crab, crunchy yuzu-scented lotus root braise, quail egg braise, stir-fried kimchi, tteokgalbi (grilled short rib patties), potato salad, bracken fern — such a variety of side dishes came out that it really felt like a home-cooked meal. On top of that, freshly made seaweed soup — there wasn't a single side dish I didn't reach for.

The soy marinated crab that came as a basic side in particular felt careful enough to be sold as its own dish. It wasn't salty, and the sweet soy seasoning had soaked deep into the meat.

How the boneless braised cutlassfish and radish taste

While we were enjoying the tasty side dishes, the boneless cutlassfish stew arrived. There was cutlassfish in a red sauce, along with plenty of radish.

The boneless cutlassfish stew on the burner started to bubble. The smell of the red sauce simmering down thick stirred up the appetite. Scooping it up a bit with the ladle revealed thick cutlassfish meat, bones completely removed.

Just the fact that I didn't have to pick out any fish bones made this fun even before eating. I lifted a big piece of the sauce-soaked cutlassfish onto my rice. The moment it hit my mouth, the tender fish just melted away.

The sauce was a spicy-sweet flavor that clung nicely to the tongue, and instead of an artificial MSG taste it had a deep, rich spiciness. Since it's boneless, it was also perfect for piling sauce on top and mixing it right into the rice.

The hidden star of galchi jorim is definitely the radish. Deeply infused with sauce all the way through, the radish lifted out with the ladle once the burner flame was turned down was mouth-watering just to look at. It was cooked so soft it would fall apart with a light press of the chopsticks.

One bite and the sweet radish juice and spicy sauce burst together in my mouth. It had a different kind of savoriness and softness from the fish meat — the radish alone felt like it could empty a whole bowl of rice.

I think the most important thing when eating galchi jorim is the sauce, and here the red sauce paired really well with rice.

I scraped up every last bit of leftover sauce, mixed it into the rice, and finished the meal perfectly. Boneless cutlassfish stew wasn't just convenient — with its deep sauce flavor, fresh ingredients, and generous side dishes, it was a complete meal lacking nothing.

The hallabong ade you get for a receipt review

The cool 100% hallabong (Jeju tangerine) ade I got midway through the meal from the review event was genuinely delicious. After the spicy, rich cutlassfish stew, a sip of that refreshing drink reset my palate completely, so I could keep eating without ever getting tired of it. It wasn't an artificial sweetness but the real 100% hallabong flavor, so it stayed clean and never got cloying.