Paradise Fish Market 낙원어시장 @ Seoul

Welcome to seafood paradise where they are all swimming in tanks right before you eat them.

I found this place while looking for a sashimi restaurant in Ikseondong, Jongno, because I wanted to eat sashimi on this day. I picked this restaurant because of the live fish tanks outside the restaurant. The name of the restaurant is Paradise Fish Market, after the name of the district.

The place is as local as it gets, no English menu or staff that spoke English. There’s a waitress that spoke Mandarin though, and she helped me take my orders.

Once the food order was put in, the waitress promptly put down the banchan (side dishes), but it wasn’t anything to shout about.

I came specifically for a Korean dish known as Altang 알탕, which is a spicy fish roe soup. The prominent white, brain-like or sausage-like pieces in the soup are fish roe, specifically pollack roe, which is the main ingredient of this dish. I had it once in SIngapore, but there were so few pieces of the fish roe that it wasn’t worth the calories (or the price). So I only order this when I return to Korea.

In Korea the winter months are known to be the best time to enjoy seafood from the surrounding cold waters. However, it is in the summer when the bounty of the sea and fish “hoe” are the most desired.

Fresh catches from the ocean served chilled take on many forms in Korean cuisine and become the perfect match to the warm summer season. Cool on the palate and easy on the appetite, local seafood glorifies summer eating as it should be enjoyed, and one dish that is best in-season is the raw seafood soup, mulhoe.

Mulhoe 물회 is a Korean cold dish made with thinly sliced raw seafood, like fish or squid, and vegetables in a spicy, tangy broth, often with gochujang. This refreshing dish is popular in summer. It originated from the Gyeongbuk region on Korea’s southeastern coast and was a simple meal for busy or hungover fishermen, as it requires no cooking.

A mix of “seafood in water,” mulhoe is a spicy dish that captures the essence of summer eating. It combines elements of ceviche and gazpacho, featuring fresh seafood in a bright soup. Originally, it consisted of thinly sliced fresh fish with water, red pepper paste, and sometimes soju. Now, it has evolved and is enjoyed throughout Korea, with popular versions found in Pohang and Jejudo Island.

This mulhoe had two types of fish, gajami (flounder) which is slightly chewier and more texture, and domi (sea bream) which is softer and has more flavours.

Sea pineapple or sea squirt, aka meong-ge 멍게 in Korean, are known for both their peculiar appearance, described by journalist Nick Tosches as “something that could exist only in a purely hallucinatory eco-system” and their peculiar taste, described as “something like iodine” and “rubber dipped in ammonia”. Its shape strongly resembles a grenade with small fiery-looking bumps. It is red and rubbery and, when squeezed, the bumps squirt out water.

The sea pineapple is usually eaten as sashimi called meongge-hoe in Korean and paired with vinegar gochujang instead of wasabi. The flavour has been attributed to an unsaturated alcohol called cynthiaol, which is present in minute quantities. I didn’t like the taste but I couldn’t help myself from ordering them every time.

I enjoyed fresh sashimi and cool spicy soup at Paradise. I want to try it at night to soak up the atmosphere next time.

Nagwon Eosijang (Paradise Seafood Market) 낙원어시장
1st floor, 121-1 Supyo-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul 서울 종로구 수표로 121-1 1층
Tel : +82 (02) 744 8826

Visited Jun 2025