Sashimi Course Meal in Korea — Full Spread for A$50

A winter evening at a neighbourhood Japanese restaurant in Korea

Last winter, I texted my wife on the way home from work: "Reckon we grab some sashimi tonight?" We had this little Japanese restaurant near our place in Daejeon — a major city in central South Korea — that we'd been going to for ages. On nights when neither of us could be bothered cooking, we'd rock up, order a course, and take our sweet time over dinner. Japanese restaurants in Korea range from about ₩30,000 per head (roughly A$35) at the budget end to well over ₩100,000 (around A$115) for a flash omakase, and this place sat right in the middle with a ₩50,000-per-person course (about A$58). I drove past the spot recently and the sign had changed — the place is gone. So this isn't a restaurant recommendation. Instead, I want to show you what a typical neighbourhood Japanese restaurant in Korea actually puts on the table through what we experienced that night. What do you actually get for A$58 a head? That's what we're here to find out.

First up: a single piece of braised mackerel

We'd barely sat down before the courses started rolling out, and the first cab off the rank was braised mackerel. Mackerel is dead common in Korea — it's often simmered in soy sauce and served as a side dish. This came in a tiny bowl with just a single piece, topped with sesame seeds and spring onion. There was a slick of braising sauce pooled at the bottom, and when you popped it in your mouth you got this lovely mix of savoury saltiness and gentle sweetness all at once. The flesh was so tender it fell apart the second you touched it with your chopsticks. For an opening dish, it was a pretty elegant start.

A warm broth to settle the stomach

Next came hwangtae-guk — a soup made from hwangtae, which is Alaskan pollock that's been hung outdoors over winter and repeatedly frozen and thawed until it dries out completely. When you simmer it in a clear broth, you get this clean, refreshing flavour that's somehow both light and deeply satisfying. It arrived in a miniature bowl so the portion wasn't huge, but there were bits of daikon and fiery Korean chilli floating in it, and one sip was enough to feel your whole stomach unwind. My wife tried a spoonful, went "Hang on, what is this? This is really good," and polished hers off before I'd even started mine.

Sashimi salad and abalone porridge — the first half of the course

The hoe-muchim turned up looking like a small mountain on the plate. It's a dish of thinly sliced raw fish tossed with vegetables — cabbage and carrot form the base, with the fish layered on top. The whole thing was drenched in chojang, a spicy-sweet red sauce made from chilli paste, vinegar and sugar, with a generous pile of shredded nori heaped over the top. When you mix it all together from the bottom with your chopsticks and take a mouthful, you get the chewy bounce of the fish and the crunch of the veg at the same time, while the chojang's tangy kick absolutely wakes up your palate. The nori adds a touch of ocean aroma that keeps it fresh rather than heavy, and honestly I couldn't put my chopsticks down.

Up close you could see the chojang dripping over the fish slices and seeping into the gaps between the nori strips. There were sesame seeds dotted here and there that popped with a nutty flavour when you chewed, and beneath the nori the translucent fish stained red by the sauce looked absolutely gorgeous. It was worth taking a moment to just admire the thing before mixing it all together.

Abalone porridge — my wife's favourite dish of the entire course

Out came the abalone porridge. Abalone is considered a premium shellfish in Korea, and when you cook it down slowly with rice it turns into this thick, white, silky porridge. It was topped with pine nuts and sesame, and you could spot little orange specks throughout — those come from the abalone innards. One spoonful and it glided down your throat, leaving a gentle ocean fragrance that bloomed through your mouth. No heat, no sharpness, just warmth and a quiet richness. Having it right after the punchy chojang-coated sashimi salad made it feel like a complete palate reset. My wife kept going on about this one for ages afterwards — of the entire course that night, this abalone porridge was the clear winner for her.

The mains arrive — sushi and seafood take over the table

Once we hit the back half of the course, the serious stuff started landing. Sushi on white plates, seafood — prawns, octopus, sea squirt — portioned out on black dishes, all arriving in one go. For a neighbourhood Japanese restaurant in Daejeon charging ₩50,000 a head, having this much food cover the table was genuinely impressive. My wife watched the plates keep coming and laughed: "There's more?" Where Japanese omakase focuses on perfecting each individual piece, Korean Japanese restaurants go the other direction — they absolutely load the table. It's a different approach, and I wouldn't say one's better than the other.

Three kinds of sushi: tuna, flounder and prawn

The tuna nigiri. A thick slab of deep red flesh sitting on top of the rice, and the moment it hit my tongue it just melted.

The flounder nigiri was a completely different experience. The pale pink flesh had a firm, springy chew to it — the polar opposite of the tuna. This wasn't about melt-in-your-mouth softness; it was about that satisfying bounce when you bite down.

The prawn nigiri had a whole cooked prawn, tail and all, pressed onto the rice. It had a plump, snappy texture with a gentle sweetness, and it was the first piece my wife reached for. I reckon for anyone who's not totally comfortable with raw fish, the prawn's probably the easiest entry point.

Seafood side dishes: prawns, sea squirt and octopus

A handful of plump, translucent little prawns came out in a separate dish, completely unseasoned. With no sauce at all, you just got the pure natural sweetness of the prawn itself. Eating them plain actually turned out to be the way to go.

Meongge — sea squirt — made an appearance. It's a Korean seafood with orange flesh and a soft, almost squishy texture. The ocean smell is pretty intense and there's a bitter aftertaste, so it's one of those love-it-or-hate-it things. My wife, being a foreigner who's not used to this kind of seafood, tried one piece, pulled a face, and slid the rest straight over to my side of the table. The "absolutely not" expression was so clear I couldn't help but laugh. If you've never had it before, fair warning — brace yourself.

A thick slice of octopus tentacle arrived sitting on a perilla leaf (kkaennip) — a strongly aromatic herb that Koreans use to wrap sashimi or meat in, a bit like how you'd use a lettuce cup. When you eat the octopus on the perilla, you get that herby, almost minty fragrance alongside the chewy octopus texture all in one go. The suction cups look a bit confronting if you're not used to it, but when you chew, a gentle nutty flavour slowly comes through.

The sashimi main event — tuna by cut and flounder

And then the centrepiece arrived. A big platter loaded with thick slices arranged by cut — lean red tuna, medium-fatty belly, salmon — with flounder on a bamboo stand placed alongside it. Wasabi was piled generously to one side, and a yellow chrysanthemum sat as a garnish in the centre. To the left, the hwangtae soup and egg custard hot pot were still going; to the right, sushi plates and seafood dishes remained. The table looked like an absolute battlefield. This was the moment my wife pulled out her phone and started snapping away. Getting a spread like this for ₩50,000 per person (about A$58) — that right there is the value proposition of a Korean Japanese restaurant.

Chutoro and otoro — medium and fatty tuna belly

When you pick up a slice of chutoro — medium-fatty tuna belly — you can see the white fat marbled densely through the flesh. Pop it in your mouth and that fat melts at body temperature, releasing this rich, buttery, deeply savoury flavour. You immediately understand why this is the most popular tuna cut going. I passed a piece to my wife and her eyes went wide as she nodded — no words needed.

From another angle you could clearly see the fat spreading in pink tones along the grain of the meat. Beside it sat pickled ginger (gari) — thinly sliced ginger preserved in vinegar. When you're eating multiple types of sashimi, nibbling a piece of gari between varieties cleanses your palate so you can taste each fish more distinctly.

This one's the otoro — the fattiest part of the tuna belly. The flesh is almost entirely pink, streaked with tight white lines of intramuscular fat. The moment it hits your mouth, there's nothing to chew — it just dissolves. In Japan, this cut sits at the very top of the price ladder, so seeing it included in a ₩50,000 course was a genuine surprise. Sure, if you compared it side by side with what a high-end sushi-ya in Tokyo serves, there'd be differences in ageing and thickness. But the fact that you can taste otoro at this price point is exactly the kind of advantage Korean Japanese restaurants offer.

Akami, flounder and salmon

The akami is the lean, red part of the tuna with very little fat. Compared to the belly cuts, the texture is firmer and drier, but dab a bit of wasabi on and dip it in soy sauce and the clean, pure tuna flavour really shines through. After your palate's been saturated with all that richness, eating this feels like hitting the reset button.

The flounder sashimi sat on a bamboo stand, its translucent white flesh looking almost glass-like. When you chew, there's a springy resistance followed by a gentle sweetness that creeps up slowly — a totally different character from the deep, punchy tuna.

The vivid red of the akami sitting next to the bright green wasabi made for a striking colour contrast, and right beside them were the chutoro and salmon lined up together. The pink and orange side by side was gorgeous on its own. My wife took more photos during this stretch than at any other point in the meal.

The salmon sashimi was a bright, vibrant orange with a slight oily sheen on the surface. In the mouth it was smooth and buttery with a rich, almost creamy flavour. My wife prefers salmon to tuna, so she quietly pulled several pieces onto her own plate. "These are mine," she said, sliding the dish to her side of the table. I just let her have them.

Sashimi in a leaf wrap — another way to enjoy Korean-style raw fish

I tried wrapping some tuna in a Chinese cabbage leaf and eating it as a ssam. In Korea there's a whole culture of wrapping pork belly in lettuce at barbecue joints, and at Japanese restaurants too, some people like to put their sashimi on a leaf and eat it in one big mouthful. The crunch of the cabbage combined with the soft tuna created a completely different experience from eating the sashimi on its own.

Lifting a piece of flounder with chopsticks, you could see it was sliced so thin the flesh was nearly translucent. In the mouth it starts firm and chewy, and the longer you chew, the more a quiet sweetness slowly builds. That understated sweetness is exactly what makes white-fleshed fish so moreish — I kept reaching for another piece without even thinking about it.

Hot sides dropped mid-course — this is what makes Korean Japanese restaurants different

We were right in the middle of the sashimi when a grilled mackerel suddenly landed on the table. This is what Korean Japanese restaurants are all about. Hot side dishes just pop up mid-course without warning. The skin was grilled to a golden crisp, cracked open to reveal the white flesh underneath, and when you pulled the meat apart with your chopsticks, a little oil ran out with a salty, toasty aroma. After eating cold sashimi for a good stretch, biting into something piping hot completely revived the appetite. In a Japanese omakase, you don't tend to get these random hot dishes interrupting the flow, but in Korea these sides are exactly what give the course its rhythm.

Steamed egg custard and corn cheese

Gyeran-jjim — Korean steamed egg custard — turned up next. It's beaten egg steamed in a stone pot, and in Korea you eat it with a spoon, almost like a soup. It arrived still foamy on top, sprinkled with black sesame and spring onion. Soft and warm, having a spoonful of this between sashimi pieces felt like giving your palate a proper breather.

Corn cheese rocked up too. Sweet corn kernels topped with cheese and baked, still bubbling away on a hot plate when it hit the table. The combo of sweet corn and salty melted cheese has absolutely nothing to do with sashimi, but at Korean Japanese restaurants this sort of thing is regularly included in the course as standard. My wife asked, "Can we order another one of these?" but we weren't sure if it was a course item or available à la carte, and it felt a bit awkward to ask the staff. We ended up just scraping every last bit off the plate.

The roe rice finale, and a restaurant that's no longer there

The finisher was al-bap — roe rice. A hot stone pot filled with rice was topped with a generous heap of bright orange flying fish roe, with yellow danmuji (pickled radish) and sesame on the side. Al-bap is a dish where you mix fish roe into rice, and as you stir it with a spoon the tiny eggs pop, releasing a salty, savoury umami that spreads through every grain. My wife said "When are we ever going to finish all this?" but before she'd even finished the sentence she was already scooping up the first spoonful. We both cleaned our bowls.

The bill, and some honest gripes

When the bill came it was ₩100,000 for the two of us — ₩50,000 each (about A$58 per person). From starters through to porridge, sashimi salad, sashimi by cut, sushi, grilled mackerel, steamed egg, corn cheese and roe rice — at that price, honestly, you'd be hard pressed to complain. That said, I did have two minor gripes. First, I wished the sashimi slices had been cut a touch thicker. The variety was impressive, but each individual piece felt a bit on the thin side. Second, having divisive seafood like sea squirt included in the course without warning meant that if you're dining with someone who's not used to that sort of thing, it's worth giving them a heads-up beforehand.

On the drive home, my wife said the abalone porridge and the corn cheese were her two highlights. Funny that — the sides left a bigger impression than the sashimi itself. We went out specifically for raw fish, but what stuck with us in the end were those warm dishes that appeared between the cold courses. In the car heading back to our place in Daejeon, my wife said "Let's come back here." But a few months later, when I drove past that spot, a different sign was hanging above the door.