Seoul fish market shop for September gizzard shad: Yeongjae Susan

If you live in a country with four distinct seasons, you can't skip seasonal food, right? haha To eat the gizzard shad and live shrimp that are absolutely in season right now, I headed to Garak Market — specifically to Yeongjae Susan (영재수산), which I've now visited more times than I can count :)

• Yeongjae Susan
• Address: 1F C-10, Garak Mall Sales Building, 932 Yangjae-daero, Songpa-gu, Seoul, South Korea
• Hours: Daily 07:00 – 22:00
• Parking: Available

Where Yeongjae Susan is and how to park at Garak Mall

Yeongjae Susan is at 1F C-10 in the Garak Mall sales building, just 58m from Exit 2 of Garak Market Station. If you're coming by public transit, it's right at your doorstep — you can find it the moment you step off :)

I drove today. Enter through the South Gate 1 parking lot, park near pillars E09–E10 on B3, then take the escalator up — Yeongjae Susan is right there on your right!

They also gave us a parking voucher, so we didn't have to worry about parking at all :)

Seasonal seafood on display inside Yeongjae Susan

Walking into Yeongjae Susan, live shrimp, crab, and gizzard shad were laid out right in front of me — just the sight of it made my mouth water.

The tanks were packed full of flounder, sea bream, octopus, clams — all kinds of things!

Yeongjae Susan's menu and what we ordered in September

The menu at Yeongjae Susan is genuinely huge! From mixed sashimi platters to bluefin tuna, flatfish, mullet, jack mackerel, sea bass, flounder, sea bream, gizzard shad, croaker, salmon — pretty much every kind of sashimi you can think of is here :)

We ordered the mini gizzard shad-flounder-sea bream sashimi set and 1kg of live shrimp!

The 1kg live shrimp was ₩31,000, which is definitely cheaper compared to other shops! Being right in Garak Market gives it that straight-from-the-source freshness, and having both freshness and price competitiveness is probably why I keep coming back to Yeongjae Susan :)

It took about 10 minutes from ordering to getting our takeout, and browsing the shop during that time made it fly by. They also packed everything in a nice insulated bag, so it was easy to carry and I didn't have to worry about it staying cold at all :)

Eating the mini sashimi set and 1kg live shrimp at home

We took the mini sashimi set and 1kg live shrimp home and enjoyed them comfortably there!

What September gizzard shad tastes like

September gizzard shad is genuinely different! The moment you put a piece in your mouth, that savory oil bursts and fills your whole mouth. There's a Korean saying that "even a daughter-in-law who ran away from home comes back for the smell of grilling gizzard shad" — and that saying didn't come from nowhere :)

The flesh itself is firm yet tender, and the savoriness keeps building the more you chew — that rich, oily flavor of blue-backed fish felt like it was at its absolute peak this season! Any fishiness was completely tamed, leaving only that savory taste — a genuinely perfect combination :)

Flounder and red sea bream in the set

The flounder had a chewy, clean texture that cleared the palate between bites of the rich gizzard shad! Even at the mini size, the set was generous enough to include the fin meat.

The sea bream got sweeter the more I chewed it, with a springy texture that stayed alive — switching back and forth between it and the gizzard shad, I never got tired of it :)

Peeling 1kg of live shrimp: 30 minutes for two

As you can probably tell from the photos, the amount of live shrimp was genuinely enormous! My partner and I spent almost 30 minutes fighting our way through peeling them all ourselves at home. Prepping shrimp that are still moving once you get home is no easy task :) But the moment I saw the plate piled high with peeled shrimp, all that effort was forgotten!

Peel one, pop it in your mouth, and you first get that springy, crisp texture, followed by a sweet, fresh flavor spreading out — this is what live shrimp is supposed to taste like!

That clear, moist sweetness unique to live shrimp — something you can never get from cooked shrimp — combined with the springy bite, is genuinely addictive :)

It's even better dipped in vinegar-chili sauce; the sweet shrimp flavor meeting the tangy sauce kept my hand reaching back for more. We also made a spicy buldak-mayo sauce that's trending right now and tried it with the shrimp — that turned out to be another treat!

We saved the shrimp heads separately and finished them off pan-fried in butter — perfect :)

How much live shrimp should two people order?

I thought 1kg would already be a lot, and it turned out to be true — even though we both love sashimi and seafood, eating sashimi plus 1kg of shrimp on top was genuinely too much. For two adults eating it alongside sashimi, 500g would probably be plenty.

Is Yeongjae Susan worth a Garak Market trip?

If you want to eat in-season seafood at Garak Market, I genuinely recommend Yeongjae Susan! It hits all three — freshness, price, and accessibility — which is probably why I keep leaving satisfied even after countless visits :) Make sure to go before gizzard shad season ends!