Gwangalli bar open till dawn: butter crab pasta at Maenggu Pocha

A late-night bar in Gwang-an found during a Busan trip! Went to Maenggu Pocha ~~ I came for the butter grilled crab that's gotten famous at Busan bars, and overall it was pretty good so let me tell you about it ~

Walking from Gwangalli Beach to Maenggu Pocha at 11pm

Maenggu Pocha Gwang-an Main Branch isn't right in front of Gwangalli Beach — it's just a little way into an alley from there. We visited around 11pm on a weekday and it was pretty lively.

After sashimi for round one, we walked from our accommodation along the Gwangalli beach road to help digest ~~ On the way there's a game arcade, a photo booth, cafés and more besides the sea, so there's plenty to look at casually — snapped a photo booth shot and arrived!

It's close to the sea but not on the noisy main street, so there were a lot of couples ~

The place has a hip vibe ~ and the weather was nice and cool that day. They were playing an old-song medley that brought back memories haha, felt just like the old days haha

Order details

Can you bring your own non-alcoholic beer? Drinking while pregnant

I,, 7 months in and craving the taste of alcohol.. I kept holding back even from non-alcoholic beer just in case it wasn't good, but today, I really,, wanted some!!

So I double-double-checked with Gemini and the internet and bought Hite Zero All Free beer to bring!! I asked the staff, since I'm pregnant, if it was okay to bring just one non-alcoholic beer to drink!!?!?? and they said yes hahaha yay~

What does Maenggu Pocha's butter grilled crab taste like?

The reason I came to Maenggu Pocha! Butter grilled crab!! My husband loves crab and I love butter and cheese lol, so butter grilled crab was the perfect compromise dish — trying it for the first time, and I was so curious whether it would taste as good as I hoped!

The buttery aroma really comes through, and even with cheese sprinkled on as decoration it's not greasy, and the meat yield is good ~ But since it's grilled rather than steamed or eaten as crab preserved in soy sauce, the shell gets softer and crumbles easily! Be careful not to eat the shell when you pop a bite in whole ~~

I think it was the year before last that butter grilled crab went massively viral on social media as THE thing to eat on a Busan trip — I wanted to try it back then too but already had too many restaurants planned, so I couldn't. Finally getting to eat it now!

Honestly I came just to try the butter grilled crab ㅎ_ㅎ It was round two so we said let's just have a taste ~ but mini rice balls came out too, and the wasabi dipping sauce was sweetish with a good hit of wasabi flavor, which really cut through the richness of the butter grilling! In the end we didn't leave a single bite *^*

Is the spicy seafood cream pasta a good dish to drink with?

Next up was the spicy seafood cream pasta~ It doesn't come boiling for you to cook yourself — it arrives already fully cooked! There's pepperoncino in it to add spice to the cream.

The longer you eat it, a faintly spicy aroma lingers in your mouth and cuts the richness, but it's not actually spicy, so you keep going back for more! When drinking, you crave carbs and rich food, and pasta is totally solid as a drinking snack ~~

The spicy seafood cream pasta also has scallops, shrimp and meat in it! The shrimp and scallops weren't chewy and looked good quality, which I liked~

Even though you don't need to cook it further, the sauce thickens up as time passes, so I recommend waiting a bit before eating! Thick is better, right ~

Trading the order coin for a snack, and what to try next

At Maenggu Pocha, you get 1 coin per order that you can exchange for a snack anytime, so on our way out after paying, I traded mine for jelly ㅎ_ㅎ A nice little palate cleanser to finish off Maenggu Pocha in Gwang-an! Since I love Maenggu (Jjanggu's friend from the cartoon), the name made it feel even more endearing,, lol

Next time I visit, I want to try the plain pasta and the egg toast!