Jeonpo sashimi restaurant with butter-grilled shrimp heads: Rigo Susan

Last night in Busan: heading to Rigo Susan in Jeonpo

Our last night in Busan! I was wondering what to eat when my brother-in-law said it's shrimp season right now and we absolutely had to have raw shrimp sashimi haha. So dinner was decided — sashimi in Jeonpo!

The place we visited was Rigo Susan Jeonpo Station Main Branch (리고수산 전포역본점). We'd finished prepping for a meeting that day, so by our standards we arrived a bit late lol — around 6:40pm. Parking was a little tough; I went in first while my husband circled around a few times and ended up paying ₩3,000 for an hour at the paid lot above the restaurant. If you're planning to visit, give yourself some extra time for parking! :)

Caramel popcorn as the first snack at Rigo Susan

🍿 Popcorn first while waiting for my husband haha. At Rigo Susan Jeonpo Station Main Branch, once you sit down they bring water along with sweet caramel popcorn. My husband was still out driving around looking for parking... so I started eating the popcorn alone lol.

In the end I basically finished it all ^^ My husband probably doesn't even know popcorn was served here... Coincidentally, we'd watched the movie Odyssey that afternoon and didn't eat popcorn at the theater, but ended up eating it here instead lol. I set out the soy sauce and vinegar-chili sauce ahead of time and waited for my husband.

Spicy fish stew and taster mulhoe from the review event

🎁 I also made sure to grab the review event. When I visited, you could get spicy stew and a sample mitbat water hoe through the Catch Table and Naver review event. We... asked for both haha.

It would've been a shame to miss out on something like this lol. The event details can change depending on the season, so it's worth checking whether it's currently running when you visit! :)

How many side dishes does Rigo Susan serve?

🥢 The side dishes (banchan) here are seriously generous. The table fills up before the sashimi even arrives. When I visited, we got California rolls, tteokbokki (stir-fried rice cakes), aged baek-kimchi, squid and sweet potato fritters, shrimp, perilla leaves with chili and garlic, cold udon, corn cheese, okonomiyaki, cabbage salad, and even seaweed — a huge variety.

There were so many kinds that it was fun picking through them one by one haha. And honestly, there wasn't really a single dish I didn't want to touch.

When the cold udon first arrived, I thought to myself

Won't it get bland once the ice melts?

so I took the ice out right away while waiting for my husband lol. But when I tasted it later, it felt like the seasoning had actually been balanced with some ice melt in mind. Personally, I think leaving the ice in and eating it cold suits it better!!

Stirring cabbage salad into the taster mulhoe

🥗 Even cabbage got added to the sample water hoe! The mitbat water hoe from the review event also arrived. We were told to drizzle vinegar-chili sauce over the cabbage salad separately, but instead of eating it plain, I mixed some in bit by bit with the water hoe haha.

That way there were more vegetables and it stayed crunchy, which was nice. The water hoe itself was tangy and appetite-whetting, so it was a great thing to eat before the main sashimi arrived.

Four sauces served with the sashimi

🧂 Mixing and matching sauces too. Rigo Susan's tables have soy sauce and vinegar-chili sauce, plus a separate ssamjang-and-garlic style sauce and a fritter dipping sauce. I didn't just dip fritters in the fritter sauce — I tried dipping salmon in it too haha.

Rather than eating sashimi with just soy sauce and wasabi the whole time, I like switching up the combinations, so this setup was right up my alley.

The platter that day: young yellowtail, mullet, salmon and live shrimp

🐟 Finally, the main sashimi arrived! The sashimi served that day at Rigo Susan was amberjack, gizzard shad, salmon, and live shrimp :) And with perfect timing... my husband arrived the exact moment the sashimi and spicy stew hit the table lol. Talk about timing haha.

We'd watched a movie and gotten a little lost around Busan that day, so we hadn't eaten a proper lunch. That made this hearty dinner spread even more welcome.

Perilla leaves, seaweed wraps and sashimi sushi

🍣 I tried the sashimi several different ways. Sometimes wrapped in perilla leaves, sometimes made into sushi with the rice that came with it, sometimes wrapped in seaweed. Dipped in soy sauce and wasabi, and in vinegar-chili sauce and wasabi too~

Switching things up instead of eating it just one way meant I never got tired of it, even by the end haha. If you're looking for a Jeonpo sashimi spot with all kinds of side dishes, you'll probably like this setup.

Sansho pepper in the stew is optional

🌿 And here's the detail I thought was a nice touch! At Rigo Susan you could choose whether or not to add sansho pepper powder to the spicy stew, and could also request it separately if you wanted. I don't usually add sansho pepper myself, but my husband is from Gyeongsang Province and loves it in spicy fish stew haha, so we asked for it on the side that day too.

After eating it together a few times now, I think spicy stew with sansho pepper is starting to grow on me lol. To me it has a faint, slightly earthy but also fresh scent, with a bit of a tingling sensation at the end. I didn't dump it all in — just a little at a time.

An event stew still packed with fish and vegetables

🍲 I figured the stew from the review event would be mostly broth. But it turned out to have plenty of solid ingredients too. The broth was delicious to me, so in the end... extra rice lol.

It'd be a shame to have delicious stew broth and not eat it with rice haha. After sashimi, finishing with hot stew and rice felt like the proper way to wrap things up.

Live shrimp sashimi: bracing yourself before the first bite

🦐 And finally... the live raw shrimp sashimi I actually came to Rigo Susan for! They really do move. It was obvious just from looking that they were fresh, but they kept flopping around and even jumping toward other dishes, so I couldn't bring myself to eat them right away.

I needed to mentally prepare myself lol. So I only started on the shrimp after eating some of the other food first.

Struggling with the shrimp heads until staff stepped in

😂 You're supposed to just put on gloves and pull the heads off, but... my husband turned out to be really bad at this lol.

Poor thing...

he kept saying without managing to pull it off. They're slippery, and since we usually eat cooked shrimp like grilled prawns where the head pops right off, we assumed it'd be the same with live shrimp — but it wasn't that simple. In the end we apologetically asked a staff member passing by for help. And they twisted it off in one clean motion lol. We'd been way too timid about it.

The shrimp heads come back grilled in butter

🧈 The shrimp heads we pulled off later came back as buttered grilled shrimp heads. I used to be scared even of shrimp eyes, thinking...

How am I supposed to eat that head?

lol. But once, my sister made buttered shrimp heads at home, and both my husband and I fell completely in love with them. Ever since then, we eat them without hesitation haha.

Since we'd just watched Odyssey that day, eating this made me think of the one-eyed creature from the movie lol. It gave me a fleeting pang of guilt, but... it was delicious and I ate every bit of it haha.

A walk down Jeonpo Cafe Street after dinner

🌃 We really ate a ton... and somehow finished nearly all of it haha. From sashimi to side dishes, live shrimp, spicy stew, rice, and buttered shrimp heads — it turned into a really hearty last dinner in Busan.

The water served was corn silk tea, and I actually love that kind of touch lol. I'm fine with plain water too, but whenever a restaurant serves some kind of tea as their water, it makes me unreasonably happy.

After eating, we walked around Jeonpo's café street, and there were so many young people around.

This really is the young people's street...

I thought lol. Having been staying in Jeju, walking through Jeonpo in Busan felt like a completely different atmosphere haha. Got a nice dose of youthful energy on the way out.

Yomangjin's verdict on Rigo Susan

✅ On our last night in Busan, we went looking for a Jeonpo sashimi restaurant to eat live raw shrimp — Rigo Susan! I was mostly curious about the raw shrimp sashimi, but beyond the sashimi there was an amazing range of side dishes, and food kept coming out from the sample water hoe to the spicy stew to the final buttered shrimp heads, so it ended up being a really hearty meal.

Since I hadn't eaten a proper lunch that day especially... I left completely full lol. Watching the raw shrimp still moving still makes me a little squeamish, but getting to eat seasonal live shrimp as sashimi, then having the heads made into buttered grilled shrimp, made for a dinner that definitely stuck with me.

A place I'll probably think of again on a day when I don't just want sashimi and done, but want to load up on sides and finish with a full, hearty spicy stew!