Family sashimi platter with ₩5,000 spicy stew in Wolsan-dong, Gwangju

This time I went out on a date with my mom and youngest sibling, just the three of us, for the first time in a while. We were deciding where to go for something good to eat and ended up at Hwanggeum Hoe Pocha, a well-known spot in Wolsan-dong. We had a hearty spread of raw shrimp and raw fish sashimi plus all kinds of side dishes, and left completely full. The sashimi was especially fresh and delicious — a proper day of eating from raw shrimp sashimi all the way to spicy fish stew 😊

Location, hours, and parking at Hwanggeum Hoe Pocha

• 📌 Hwanggeum Hoe Pocha, Wolsan-dong
• 📍 104 Gunbun-ro, 1st floor, Nam-gu, Gwangju, South Korea
• ⏰ Open daily 12:00 - 23:00
• 🚗 We parked in a nearby alley

Hwanggeum Hoe Pocha is open every day from noon to 11pm, so it's a good place to visit anytime from lunch through dinner.

Raw shrimp + raw fish sashimi for three, loaded with side dishes

That day we ordered the raw shrimp + raw fish sashimi set for three. I wondered how much food would come out for three people, but as dishes started arriving one by one, the table filled up fast. It wasn't just sashimi — the side dishes (called ssuki) came out generously too, which won me over right away. Sushi rice, corn mayo, soybean powder salad, seaweed mulhoe (cold raw fish soup), grilled herring, and seaweed soup were all laid out, plus various accompaniments to eat with the sashimi, so it was fun trying a bit of everything.

Self-serve scallion pancake you fry yourself

There's also a self-serve corner where you can fry your own scallion pancake (buchujeon). Being able to fry a pancake yourself while waiting for the sashimi was a nice touch 😊 We tasted the side dishes first — the grilled herring was nutty and clean-tasting, and the seaweed mulhoe was refreshing and cool.

Raw fish sashimi wrapped in perilla leaf with soybean powder salad

Then the main event finally arrived!

I started with the raw fish sashimi and it was genuinely fresh and delicious. Freshness matters most with sashimi, and this one had a nice chewy texture and clean flavor that kept me reaching for more. It's great dipped in vinegar-chili sauce or soy sauce, but this time we tried something a little special. I put a piece of sashimi on a perilla leaf with some soybean powder salad and wrapped it up like a bite-sized parcel — and honestly, this combo was way better than expected 🤭 The perilla fragrance blending with the fish, plus the tangy, nutty soybean powder salad, made me keep wrapping bite after bite. This combination was my favorite part of the day.

Adding sashimi to the seaweed mulhoe made it even better too. The cool, tangy broth with the fish felt refreshing on the palate, a nice break between bites of straight sashimi. Adding fish to mulhoe suited it so well I almost wished I'd started that way from the beginning 🤭 Sushi rice also came out, so we could make our own sashimi-topped rice bites too. Topping the rice with a slice of fish gave a totally different feel — it was fun mixing and matching ways to eat everything.

Raw shrimp sashimi and fried shrimp heads

And then the dish I'd been most looking forward to — raw shrimp sashimi 🦐 Just looking at it, the shrimp looked plump and springy, and tasting it, there was a sweet flavor that made it genuinely delicious. The shrimp meat was bouncy and sweet, a different charm entirely from the raw fish. If you like raw shrimp, you'll enjoy this a lot. And the shrimp heads weren't just tossed out — they were fried separately and brought to us. Eating the crispy fried shrimp heads was a real treat too. Eating the meat and then the heads, nothing went to waste 🤣 We also ate the corn mayo and seaweed soup side dishes, which was nice — better than eating sashimi nonstop, having other dishes mixed in. Sharing everything with my mom and youngest sibling made for good conversation too. Places like this with a wide variety of dishes really are the best for family visits 💛

₩5,000 spicy stew with hand-torn dumplings

And there was one more thing we added at the end — spicy fish stew (maeuntang)!

You can add the spicy stew for ₩5,000, and we figured we'd finish with it after all the sashimi — turns out adding it was absolutely the right call. Simmered spicy and hot, it was the perfect warm finish after all that raw fish. And there was something fun about the stew — they gave us dumpling dough separately so we could tear it in ourselves. Tearing off small pieces and dropping them into the stew felt like a small thing, but it was surprisingly satisfying, haha. Once the dumplings cooked through, eating them with the broth was chewy and delicious, and the stew's spicy broth kept the spoon moving even though we were already pretty full from all the sashimi 😂 Adding the stew that day was such a good decision.

Visiting this time, I understood why people seek this place out as a Wolsan-dong favorite. The raw fish sashimi was fresh and delicious, and the raw shrimp sashimi was sweet and springy. On top of that, a variety of side dishes — sushi rice, soybean powder salad, seaweed mulhoe, grilled herring, seaweed soup — let us enjoy the sashimi in so many different ways.

A great spot for a family sashimi spread

I especially loved wrapping sashimi with soybean powder salad in perilla leaf. Adding sashimi to the mulhoe was delicious too, and I'll probably eat it that way again next time 😊 At the end, we added the ₩5,000 spicy stew, tore in dumplings ourselves, and finished off with a bowl of hot broth — a truly satisfying way to end the meal.

Overall, the food was generous and the sashimi was fresh, making it a great place to visit with family. Especially with several people, like my mom and youngest sibling, you can share everything from sashimi to side dishes, which makes it even better. It had been a while since I'd spent time with my mom and youngest sibling like this, and chatting over delicious sashimi made the day feel extra joyful 💛 If you're looking for a sashimi restaurant in Wolsan-dong, or want a generous sashimi spread with family or friends, Hwanggeum Hoe Pocha is worth a visit.