Review: Qijin (Cijin) District and seafood feast at 旗后活海產

Still on Day 2.  I think we ate 1 week worth of food on Day 2.  Stay with us!  Day 2 is about halfway done!  HAHAHA.  

After we had our breakfast and snack around the neighbourhood, we met up with my sister and her husband to take the ferry to Qijin Island (also spelled as Cijin).   It was a short ferry ride to the island.  Turns out you could also drive to the island but you'd have to drive around town basically because there's only 1 bridge to access the island on the South side.   

This district is known to be a fishermen's district by the seaside, so as you can imagine, we were greeted with a waft of fishy ocean smell.  LOL (the good kind, not the fishy/stinky kind).   Lots of live seafood being sold along the street, and there's also a lot of food stalls selling the famous Taiwanese fish roe (more on that later).   

We resorted on one of the highly-rated live seafood restaurants to have our lunch.  It's called 旗后活海產 (The translation using Google translate: Qihou live seafood).  Basically they had live seafood being displayed in the front of the store, and you get to pick whatever seafood you want, however much you want, and cooked however way you want.   Thankfully we were there with my brother in-law so he took care of all the ordering.  I would have no frigging idea how to tell them that I want this to be deep friend, and that one to be grilled.  HAHA.  

First, we ordered the veggie; super simple dish of pea shoots with garlic.  Yum.  

Then we ordered clams, of course, right?  have to try to clams.  

Then we had sea cucumbers (I think that's what these are... I put all my faith into my brother in-law to order whatever he thinks is good).  It is sooo good!  soft chewy texture with a slight crunch on the outer layer of the meat.  

And of course we had this traditional delicacy of deep fried fish.  They're almost the size of smelt fish but less meaty (and definitely don't have eggs).  It taste more like deep fried silver fish that you usually can find in North America.  It's served with the infamous Taiwanese salt & pepper on the side.  I would eat this over a bowl of steamed rice and call it a day.  LOL.  

We also ordered deep fried oysters, which is probably the best deep fried oysters that I've tried!  It was flavourful but not overpowering.  Really soft and meaty oysters!  and again, served with dipping sauce on the side and also the Taiwanese salt & pepper.  

Last but not least (and the most interesting dish we ordered) is sea snails!  It's kind of like escargot in French cuisine.  But it's sea snails instead of land snails that are cooked in escargot.  This is such an interesting dish!  The snails are cooked and tossed in lots of white pepper, and then served on a piping hot clay pot.   They provided us with tooth picks to fish out the snail meat, unlike the fancy two-prong escargot fork / snail fork that was specially designed to easily grab the snail meat while looking posh.  But hey, whatever works, right?  :D 

In summary, we ordered so much food for the four of us.  But we finished it all!  We rolled around the island afterwards in an effort to speed up our digestion.   In reality, we ended up buying more snacks along the beach and then finished our trip with a heaping bowl of shaved ice for dessert.   We're hopeless, I know.   

Qijin is a really beautiful island and is worth a visit if you ever visit Kaohsiung!  In addition to eating some of the freshest seafood in town, we really enjoyed strolling around the beach and looking at / trying out some snacks that are sold in food carts!  The ferry ride itself is very short.  All in all, you might spend a day (max) in Qijin, and you'd still have time left in the day to explore the city once you're back in town.

Note:  while waiting for the ferry ride, the line up could be long and there's no shade.  After waiting for about 10 min, we gave up and opened our umbrella to hide underneath it.   So be prepared to be lining up under the scorching sun if you happened to be there on a bright sunny day like we were, and don't forget to slather some sunscreen on your face, arms, and neck!