Daejeon seafood restaurant for stone-pan conger eel: Jinppaei

I visited Jinppaei, a pojangmacha-style restaurant in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, where you can generously enjoy hagfish, conger eel, and grilled shellfish all in one place.

From live conger eel stir-fried on a stone pan to shellfish piled high with cheese, plus the can’t-skip fried rice to finish! 🔥 If you are looking for a Yuseong-gu spot for drinks, or want to enjoy hagfish, conger eel, and grilled shellfish together, pay attention.

Jinppaei location and parking

Jinppaei is on the street in the dining alley beside Seondeul Park in Bongmyeong-dong, Daejeon. If you come by car, they said parking support is available when you park at the Sky View City parking lot.

By public transit, it is a 2-minute walk from Oncheongyo bus stop and a 10-minute walk from Exit 7 of Yuseong Oncheon Station, so it looked easy enough to visit without a car too.

This is the exterior. You could feel the energy of a beloved old-school local spot right from outside, and it looked like it had such a nice atmosphere. I also loved that you can see fresh hagfish and conger eel in the outdoor tanks in front.

Inside the pojangmacha-style dining room

This is the inside of Jinppaei. There were lots of people enjoying a drink in the evening.

With its strong pojangmacha feel and tables full of human warmth, it was an old-school place with loads of character.

Even just looking at the walls, you could tell this was a welcoming place filled with so many people’s memories. It seemed perfect for ending a date with delicious food and a drink.

Everyone knows hagfish and conger eel are good for you, right? They are good for you and delicious too, so isn’t that killing two birds with one stone? At the restaurant, they prepare the live hagfish and conger eel right away, and being able to watch your food being cleaned and cooked gave me confidence—and was fun to see.

Hagfish, conger eel, and grilled shellfish menu

Here is Jinppaei’s menu. They sell hagfish, conger eel, and grilled shellfish. There are also dishes such as grilled jokbal (braised pig’s trotters), rock sea squirts, and seasoned pork tails, as well as set menus, so you can enjoy several things together. The food photos on the wall also helped with choosing.

They said you get corn cheese if you take part in the receipt-review event, so it would be nice to join in and receive it.

This is how to enjoy Jinppaei’s menu 200%. I recommend reading it carefully. Thanks to it, my husband and I ate very well.

Ordering Jinppaei Set No. 2

Jinppaei Set No. 2, 5.3 — conger eel (2 servings) + tasting shellfish grill

We ordered Jinppaei Set No. 2, which lets you have conger eel and grilled shellfish together.

Banchan and the stone pan and charcoal setup

This is Jinppaei’s basic table setting. Side dishes and foods that suited a pojangmacha came as standard.

They brought a varied, homey selection of banchan (Korean side dishes): dried pollock soup, fresh kimchi salad, stir-fried kimchi, sea squirt salad, cucumber, carrot, anchovies, and sauces. The dried pollock soup had bean sprouts, so the broth was wonderfully refreshing and seemed ideal as a drinking snack.

It was my first time eating sea squirts this way, and their pleasantly chewy texture and salty ocean aroma felt so refined. With chili peppers, a spicy note was added too, making it fresh and delicious.

Out came the stone pan for stir-fried conger eel and the charcoal for the shellfish. Looking at the stone pan and charcoal grill, both meant to maximize the flavor, I could feel how sincerely Jinppaei takes its food.

Stone-pan conger eel stir-fry

Jinppaei Set No. 2: grilled conger eel (2 servings) + tasting shellfish grill, ₩53,000

For the conger eel, you can choose salt-grilled, stone-pan stir-fried, or seasoned grilled. My husband and I chose the stone-pan stir-fry.

This is the stone-pan conger eel stir-fry for two. They poured seasoned conger eel, onion, green onion, and other vegetables onto a thick stone pan, then stir-fried everything into easy-to-eat pieces. The sight of conger eel soaked in seasoning really made me want a drink.

I tried the vegetables and conger eel in one bite, and it was so delicious because the seasoning had soaked right into the eel. The tender flesh melted away the moment it entered my mouth, while the vegetables still had a lovely bite—pure art! The sauce had the delicious gochujang (Korean red chili paste)-based feel of tteokbokki sauce, and I wanted to learn its secret.

Wrapped in perilla leaf, the leaf’s aroma, conger eel, and seasoning came together so harmoniously. And when I scooped up a generous spoonful of eel, vegetables, and sauce, the crisp onion, tender eel, and seasoning were incredible. It is such a good snack with drinks.

If you add perilla leaves directly to the stone-pan conger eel stir-fry, their fragrance gently coats everything and brings out an even deeper flavor.

Cheese shellfish and charcoal-grilled abalone

This is the tasting shellfish grill included in the Jinppaei set. It came with a large pen shell, four scallops, and two abalones.

The pen shell and scallops were generously topped with seasoning and mozzarella cheese, and they were grilling beautifully over the charcoal. Once nicely cooked, you mix the cheese and seasoning into the pen shell and eat it by the spoonful. The chewy shellfish texture with the rich cheese was so good.

The abalone grilled over charcoal was chewy, rich like it had been tossed in butter, and delicious.

Do not skip the fried rice after the stone-pan stir-fry

For the 200% Jinppaei stone-pan stir-fry experience, you absolutely have to order fried rice. They made it into a heart shape, and you could really feel the owner’s love in it. As a tip, they say fried rice can be complimentary if you become friendly with the staff.

With conger eel, vegetables such as onion, and seaweed flakes in the fried rice, every grain was coated in sauce and it was so tasty. Topping the fried rice with white kimchi and abalone made me understand why Jinppaei is a truly great restaurant. I scraped up every last bit of that fluffy fried rice, and the pleasantly chewy texture was really delicious. If you have the stone-pan stir-fry at Jinppaei, please make sure to try the fried rice!