원조부산아구 — Restaurant in Seoul

One of the three or four remaining monkfish places in this street. All having long history of establishment apparently.

Came across this place based on one of the local recommendations I saw online.

Food was satisfactory, but the place was relatively simple and dated in decor, with cramped seatings — with old furnitures and no toilet (need to go to the adjacent building and go upstairs for a small bathroom). Worth a try for a rather local dining experience (when I was there for dinner on a weekend, I believe 80% of diners were locals). U get what u paid for (I believe the other few monkfish restaurants on the street were a bit more spacious and well-lit, with prices slightly higher for the same dish and portion.

For two persons, I recommend trying the monkfish and a crab-roe rice each. (The soy crab I saw others having beside me looked really promising, but more suitable for bigger groups of 4+ ppl to share unless u have a large empty stomach to fill.)

The crab soup they served as a side was one of the best I’ve had in Seoul — and (when not too busy) the servers would offer refills from time to time.

There’re no English menus so u’d better get ur online translator ready. One of the cooks in the kitchen was from Northern China and could speak fluent Chinese and some English. Otherwise u’d expect to practice ur Korean and body language here. The servers were old ladies who’re friendly...

The ladies in here working are so sweet. They helped me order even though I speak no Korean (mix of English and Chinese), I ordered the soft crab and gimbap (rice). They even showed me how to get the most out of the crab by using the chopsticks to dig out the meat in the shell, mix the gimbap in and roll it around like a mini fried rice. Flavor was excellent and easily fills one person!...

This place was so good we ate here twice: first time for the monkfish stew and crab bap, second time for the crab soup. It’s a 24 hrs establishment, or at least we went at 11pm and it was still bustling. There’s a higher rated (on Google) monkfish stew place right next door that was pretty empty, so we went in this one instead, and I think we made the...