An oyster-heavy breakfast post-Seongsan Ilchulbong hike

Korean oyster pancake anyone? ;b

Every one of the main dishes on the table had oysters in them! ;D

After completing our pre-dawn hike up Seongsan Ilchulbong to view the sunrise from atop it and our descent a short time later (which took roughly the same amount of time thanks to our stopping a few times to enjoy the scenery and snap photos of it), my friend who had gone on this excursion and I went back to our hotel to collect the rest of our Jeju party and head off for our first real meal of the day (since a cup of coffee and chocolate bar for energy pre-hike really doesn't really count as breakfast!). 

Although there was the temptation to do so (since it too was (already) open for business), we actually didn't head back to the restaurant just a few minutes' walk away from our hotel where we had had our black pork feast the day before.  Rather, we decided to try a neighboring eatery which turned out to be an oyster specialist whose offerings included oyster pancake, oyster rice porridge, a kimchi jigae (stew) with oysters in it and rice on the side, and a tofu soup option that also turned out to come with oysters in it and a serving of rice.

As with any self-respecting Korean restaurant, we were given complimentary banchan (side dishes) that included a couple of different kinds of kimchi and also raw chili peppers.  The former I found went very well with the oyster pancake I ordered as my main option but was so big that I made everyone else on the table also have at least a couple of slices of; the latter I left well alone after having tried one at dinner the day before and found to be on the spicy side -- way too spicy for breakfast to my mind; and this from someone who has happily consumed curry noodles for breakfast in her native Malaysia!

I'm not sure if this is the norm in Korea but the meal we had at the oyster restaurant looked like it was considered perfectly acceptable to eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Put another way: the restaurant's menu doesn't seem to vary for different meal times and it appeared to be open for breakfast, lunch, dinner and any the hours in between.  And for my part, I would be happy to have had our breakfast that day for lunch or dinner on some other day since I found it to be tasty and satisfyingly filling fare -- the kind that I love to have as a reward for my exertions post-hike! ;b