Jangan-dong seafood shabu-shabu with hamo eel for two: Daemyeong Susan

I was craving seasonal seafood, so I went to Daemyeong Suran, a seafood spot in Jangan-dong!! It's a place where you can enjoy all kinds of seasonal seafood as shabu-shabu, and this time I finally tried the hamo shabu-shabu I'd been curious about for a while haha.

The style is to briefly blanch the hamo in hot broth and eat it with a generous pile of vegetables, and it won me over from the very first bite!! I made sure to properly enjoy everything from the hamo to the dumpling dough to the scorched rice lol.

Daemyeong Suran

What is hamo? The conger pike eel behind the dish

Hamo is a type of eel known in Korean as 'gaetjangeo' (conger pike eel), and it's especially prized in summer as a classic seasonal health food. Honestly, at first I wondered if hamo was different from regular eel.

Because it has so many tiny bones, it's prepared with dense, close-set cuts, and when briefly blanched in hot broth, the white flesh blooms open like a flower — that's the signature look! It's less oily than the usual grilled eel and has a cleaner taste, so even people who find eel's distinctive flavor a bit much should find this fairly easy to eat!!

Daemyeong Susan menu and prices in Jangan-dong, Seoul

Looking at Daemyeong Suran's menu, it's got a pretty wide range of options, as you'd expect from a shabu-shabu-focused seafood restaurant. Here's what we ordered!

• Hamo shabu-shabu (market price)
• Dumpling dough add-on ₩3,000
• Scorched rice ₩5,000

The hamo shabu-shabu is priced by the market rate, so it changes depending on the season — when we visited, it was around ₩120,000-130,000 for two haha.

Daemyeong Suran said both the rice and kimchi are domestically sourced, which made me trust the place even more! The mustard leaf kimchi and napa cabbage kimchi in particular were so good they got our appetites going even before the main dish arrived lol.

The hamo shabu-shabu arrives: a soybean-paste broth

Here it is at last — today's star, the hamo shabu-shabu!! It comes with a big pot full of broth, along with a generous pile of vegetables to add in. Bean sprouts, napa cabbage, bok choy, onion, perilla leaves — you name it!! Once the broth starts boiling away, you just add the vegetables as you like haha.

I tasted the broth first, and being soybean-paste based, it had a savory yet strangely spicy edge to it! With chili added on top, the spicy-savory kick got even stronger, and I kept spooning up the broth again and again lol. As the vegetables cooked and released their flavor into the broth, it got richer and deeper the longer it went.

How long to blanch hamo? Just 5-10 seconds, until it blooms like a flower

Now it's time for the hamo to go into the broth!!

If you briefly dip the hamo in the boiling broth for about 5-10 seconds, the white flesh blooms open through the cuts. It genuinely looks like a lotus flower — isn't that so pretty and appetizing?! lol

As soon as it bloomed white like a flower, I pulled it out and ate it with the various vegetables. Bean sprouts, napa cabbage, onion, perilla leaf, dipped in sauce to taste, and a big bite!!

It was much cleaner-tasting and nuttier than I expected! The flesh was soft yet had just the right amount of bounce, and best of all, there was barely any fishy smell, which I really appreciated.

Even people who find eel's fishy smell or oily texture off-putting should find hamo shabu-shabu pretty easy to enjoy! Lightly cooked in hot broth, it's clean and not greasy at all, so I kept eating it along with the vegetables.

There was also a generous amount of hamo! There were two of us, and eating it slowly with the vegetables, the portion was just right. At the end, Rulu and Pipi even split the tail in half to share evenly lol.

As we kept eating the hot, spicy broth, both of us got flushed from face to body before we knew it — so warmed up!!

At this point I started feeling like I was properly nourishing my body lol.

Sujebi dough for 3,000 won once the broth deepens

By the time we'd eaten about half the hamo, the broth had clearly gotten richer and deeper than at the start.

With broth this infused with the flavor of hamo and vegetables, adding dumpling dough is basically the rule, right? lol

So we added the dumpling dough right away!! The shape was more of a rustic, hand-torn style rather than a neat, store-bought kind, which made it look even more appetizing.

The chewy dumpling dough soaked up the deepened broth so well that with every bite you could taste the full savory, spicy flavor of the broth T_T

Personally I enjoyed this combo almost as much as the hamo itself, so if you're having the hamo shabu-shabu, definitely add the dumpling dough!!

Full, but the 5,000-won nurungji was impossible to skip

We were clearly full after the hamo and the dumpling dough, but somehow it felt like too much of a shame to stop there... so in the end we ordered the scorched rice too lol. Snacking on the crispy, nutty scorched rice in between bites turned out to be a delicacy in its own right!

A bite of hamo, then dumpling dough soaked in broth, then the nutty scorched rice, taking turns — what a combo!! Already full, but the addictive flavor kept pulling my hand back for more T_T T_T

Is seasonal hamo shabu-shabu at Daemyeong Susan worth the trip?

This was my first time really trying hamo shabu-shabu, and I could see exactly why it's considered a classic health food! Enjoying the clean, tender hamo together with the hot, spicy broth left me feeling like I'd had a proper, satisfying meal haha.

If you're looking for a good spot in Jangan-dong for when you're craving fresh, seasonal seafood, I'd recommend Daemyeong Suran.

Especially if you're looking for hamo shabu-shabu near Jangan Station, this place is well worth a visit!!