Sea bass and mullet sashimi set with grilled saury in Namdong: Veteran

Veteran General Fish Market Incheon City Hall Branch: a Namdong sashimi spot with patio seating

Veteran General Fish Market Incheon City Hall Branch is a raw fish restaurant in Namdong that throws its folding doors wide open and runs an outdoor patio (yajang) too. The weather's turned cool, so it's patio season, right? I was thinking I'd have to go all the way to Jongno 3-ga, but then I found this Namdong patio spot with a wonderfully spacious outdoor setup.

Even before I stepped inside, the atmosphere was seriously lively.

With the folding doors flung wide open and the patio running too, the outdoor seats were nearly all full when I visited — that's how popular it was. 🔥🔥 🍂It's clearly patio season for everyone🍁

The big fish tank and September's in-season live shrimp

On one side of the restaurant there was also a large tank full of live fish🐟. September is apparently when raw shrimp start coming into season. Maybe that's why so many people were eating raw shrimp, and the tank was full of them too.🦐

Water kept flowing and circulating in the tank, so it looked cleaner and better maintained. With all kinds of live fish actually swimming around in there, it really had that raw-fish-specialist feel — order and they catch it fresh right then.👍

I wanted to sit on the patio but there wasn't a seat free, so I ended up inside — but with all the folding doors open, sitting indoors still felt like the outside air and atmosphere came right in, like being on the patio anyway.

Frying your own kimchi pancake at the self-serve bar

At the Veteran General Fish Market Incheon City Hall Branch self-serve bar, there's kimchi pancake batter you can fry yourself. It was popular enough that I waited in line for it. You place your order and then, naturally, go check out the self-serve bar, right? That's where I found this unexpected bit of fun.

Pour the oil generously, pat pat, as thin as possible... as thin as possible...

And the cool move of flipping it all in one go...! How's that, haha.

💡Kimchi pancake tip💡 Adding a bit of the kimchi from the self-serve bar right next to it makes a proper kimchi pancake😂 (We didn't know that, so we just fried plain batter.) Next time we'll try again…🔥

(the self-serve bar)

Somehow we managed to fry the plain batter nice and golden, and brought it back to our table

What comes in the standard side dish spread?

The sukkidashi (side dishes) were set out generously. There's salted pollack roe, seaweed soup too. Raw fish salad!!! comes as well (included by default)

Grilled saury comes out too~ and here's our sea bass + gray mullet set!

We were both trying to cut back on alcohol, so we ordered Terra non-alcoholic beer. (Looking back at my restaurant posts, there's always soju in there somewhere…) I went so far as to bring a tumbler from home just to drink it cold. Hahaha.

I also liked that it came served up fancy, on a stone plate. (When it's served on plastic wrap, it always seems like the smell of the plastic seeps in, which I don't love — anyone else feel that way??)

How does the sea bass + gray mullet set taste?

Gray mullet

🐟Gray mullet — usually when I eat raw fish, I go for flounder or greater amberjack, so honestly I wasn't expecting much from gray mullet, but surprisingly this 🐟gray mullet was much more to my taste.

Whole grilled saury

Oily, golden, and crisply grilled 🐟grilled saury👍. Usually raw fish restaurants give you a small grilled fish, but here it came out big, like a main dish — so generous. Can you see how plump and fatty the flesh looks?

Sea bass sashimi

🐟Sea bass sashimi had a chewy, springy texture, and the more you chewed, the more a clean savory flavor came through — really appealing.

Spicy fish-head stew (seodeori maeuntang)

🐟Fish head spicy stew had plenty of flesh on the head, and there were dumpling noodles (sujebi) in it too. +) Tip: no need to order extra noodles or sujebi for the stew! The self-serve bar has a whole pile of them.

Popping a bite of sea bass sashimi in, then some saury sashimi, then cleansing the palate with the fish head spicy stew

Packed but fast-moving: how long the wait is

But here's the amazing part💡 — the place was packed with customers, and there were tons of staff too. It was genuinely busy, but the turnover was fast and even the takeout/delivery orders came out quickly. Completely systematic.

Oh, also) writing a review gets you fried shrimp! We were too full to manage more so we skipped it -> make sure to grab yours!

(Looking at this photo now, I see we're basically face-down in the table eating away…) Anyway, look how generously it's all laid out!

In Namdong💡 🍂If you want to soak up that patio mood in cool autumn weather, sitting in a spacious spot with the folding doors open, digging into fresh raw fish🐟 and an abundant spread of sukkidashi with a glass of soju🥃, I'd recommend this place!