Pohang crab restaurant, pre-season red crab course: Yeonggwang

Where to eat on Jukdo Market's crab and sashimi street in Pohang?

The crab and sashimi street at Pohang's Jukdo Market is lined with crab restaurants, so it's hard to decide where to go. Whenever I visit Pohang with my family I stop by, and from the entrance every shop tempts you to come to theirs~

They all look alike, but I've found that places with lots of customers and fast turnover are the more satisfying ones! The main sashimi, snow crab and red crab matter, but how varied the basic side dishes are also differs from shop to shop~

Lots of crab restaurants stand in a row, with fresh critters in the tanks waving their claws at you. Among them, Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center (영광회대게센타) was my first visit, and it won me over. I'm told it has been on the TV show Master of Living (생활의 달인) and locals recommend it. Let me tell you about my trip to Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center!

Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center: location, hours and parking

Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center is at 34 Jukdosijang-gil, Buk-gu, Pohang, Gyeongbuk, and it's open daily from 10 AM to 10 PM.

They also help with parking, so don't forget to get a parking ticket!

We went right after arriving in Pohang, and even before going in, the smoke and smell from the steamers working nonstop made my mouth water. My expectations were sky-high.

It was busy inside too~ The next day was the weekend, and on Saturdays and Sundays the place was packed from early morning with people looking for good eats at Pohang's Jukdo Market.

Not snow crab season yet? Order the red crab course

Snow crab season hadn't started yet, so we had the red crab course at Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center that day!

What side dishes come with the course at Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center?

As soon as you order, the basic skidari (side dish spread) is laid out, and it comes so full that there's no room left on the table~

This is exactly what "tables with bending legs" means~ Even if the nearby shops all serve like this, the kinds of dishes differ a bit! But my jaw dropped at the lineup at Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center~

• Live octopus, wriggling with freshness
• Sweet, sour and spicy mulhoe (cold raw fish soup) to wake up your appetite
• Rice-thief marinated raw crab (ganjang gejang-style yangnyeom gejang) and crispy-outside, tender-inside fish cutlet
• Savory corn cheese, lotus leaf sticky rice and shrimp sushi
• And umami-packed seafood dishes besides!

Before the main even arrived, my chopsticks were too busy to rest~ The live octopus isn't just a tiny taster either; it comes on its own plate, like a separately ordered dish, which I loved~

I'd been running around a lot before getting to Pohang, so eating good food at a Jukdo Market restaurant with a cold beer was the best!

Abalone mulhoe and thick-cut assorted sashimi

The mulhoe here comes in a broth with floating ice crystals, topped with abalone and fresh raw fish, and it was a real treat that thrilled me right down to my chest~ Pohang mulhoe is famous, after all! So I had a bowl on everyone's behalf.

And the assorted sashimi comes as a tempting plate, in quite a generous amount.

It was cut thick and stayed chewy and springy as I chewed, with no fishy taste at all, just the nutty, sweet umami of good raw fish. Art!

How meaty was the red crab at Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center?

The red crab at Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center comes already prepped, so you can just slide the meat right out~~ After warming up your stomach with the skidari and fresh sashimi, the star of the day, the red crab, arrives.

The nicely steamed red crab was full of white, moist meat the moment I cracked the shell, and I couldn't help exclaiming~ In front of snow crab and red crab, even my picky kids at home go crazy for it, haha

It melts the second it's in your mouth, with a subtle sweetness spreading, the ultimate! Red crab can be hollow if you choose badly, but the red crab here had a huge yield: pull out just one leg and the meat came out whole, over 90% yield!

King shrimp and clams are steamed together too, plump and bouncy, so delicious!

Finishing with crab shell rice, seafood ramyeon and maeuntang

Once you've dealt with a good share of the red crab legs, there's a course you can't skip, right? Crab shell rice (gejjakbap), of course, you have to eat it~ Loaded with savory seaweed flakes and sesame oil, the crab shell rice went to the extreme in the richness and nuttiness of the crab innards,

and it's even better with the seafood ramyeon that comes at the start, boiled and eaten together~ Boiled with crab legs and clams, the seafood ramyeon had a really rich broth that settled my stomach and works as a hangover cure too!

And do have the maeuntang (spicy fish stew) at the end too~

When you go hunting for a good Jukdo Market restaurant in Pohang and come for crab, what matters is how full the meat is and how varied the food that comes with it is. Yeonggwang Hoe Daegae Center satisfied me with the solid meat yield of its red crab, and the varied skidari made it even more memorable!