2-Day Busan Itinerary for Seafood Lovers, What to Eat at Each of 5 Meals

Make the first meal sashimi because the hour right after you arrive is when you are hungriest and have the most time to spare all day. Jagalchi Station is three stops from Busan Station on Line 1, and from Exit 2 it is only 220m toward Jagalchi Haean-ro, so even rolling a suitcase you are seated within three minutes. Getting sashimi done at lunch frees dinner for warm dishes like grilled fish and stew, which is how five meals end up never overlapping. Two people usually take one sashimi set meal each at KRW 20,000 (about USD 14), while a group of three or four puts an assorted sashimi platter in the middle, small at KRW 60,000 (about USD 43) or medium at KRW 80,000 (about USD 58). A spread here sets white-flesh sashimi beside soy-marinated crab, spicy sashimi salad, steamed shrimp, abalone, fritters, grilled fish and corn, so one lunch gives you a preview of what you might want for dinner. Side dishes rotate daily based on what is freshest. According to the restaurant's Jagalchi veteran with over ten years on the job, eight out of ten out-of-town guests pile in at exactly noon, so if your train schedule allows, sitting down at 11:20 or 13:30 is far more relaxed. After eating, drop your bags in a station locker and head toward the main market hall, and the afternoon flows on naturally from there.

If you had sashimi for lunch, grilled fish is the answer for dinner. Eating sashimi twice in one day leaves nothing new for the next lunch, while grilled fish is warm and pairs well with drinks, which suits an evening table. An assorted grilled fish plate, with rockfish, mackerel and flounder cooked together on one platter, keeps the chopsticks busy because each fish has a different flake and texture. Eating alone or as a pair, each person can take a grilled fish set meal at KRW 15,000 (about USD 11), while a group of four or more orders one assorted grilled plate plus a small sashimi platter at KRW 60,000 (about USD 43) so sashimi and grilled fish share a single table. Seven out of ten dinner guests have soju alongside, and peeling the grilled fish off the bone, wrapping it in lettuce and topping it with a slice of garlic makes about the most filling drinking food there is. Weekend dinner at 7 PM is the busiest stretch, so arriving before 6:30 or after 8 gets you a comfortable seat. If you happened to have grilled fish for lunch instead, simply put sashimi at dinner, the order just flips. Either way, as long as sashimi and grilled fish each appear once that day, your first day is complete.

A stew after grilled fish and sashimi is not there to fill you up, it is the broth that closes out the drinking table, so the small size is plenty. Spicy rockfish stew (ureok maeuntang) comes small at KRW 50,000 (about USD 36), medium at KRW 80,000 (about USD 58) and large at KRW 100,000 (about USD 72), and if four people have already eaten sashimi and grilled fish, one small pot gives everyone a full bowl of broth with some left over. Once the pot starts boiling with chunks of rockfish, radish, bean sprouts, green onion and crown daisy, the Jagalchi way is to ladle the broth first and pick the flesh off the bones after. Add a bowl of rice and soak it in the broth, and you have effectively handled tomorrow morning hangover in advance, so the drinks do not linger. The restaurant's Jagalchi veteran with over a decade on the job always says the same thing: do not order the stew at the start, call for it when the sashimi is about half gone, and the broth keeps bubbling on the table to the end. Guests who walk in after 9 PM usually close out with one stew and one bottle of soju, and there is no better way to end the first night without feeling heavy.

Soy-marinated crab belongs on the second day lunch because, after working through sashimi, grilled fish and stew on day one, the last flavor left to try is that salty, savory soy marinade. One plate of soy-marinated crab at KRW 30,000 (about USD 22) comes with the top shell and the legs, and once you mix rice into the shell, lunch for two is done with that single plate. If you drank on the first night, settle your stomach in the morning with abalone rice porridge at KRW 20,000 (about USD 14) or clear cod soup at KRW 15,000 (about USD 11), and push lunch back to around 12:30 so the crab does not feel heavy. A loop of the main market hall in the morning and a snack at BIFF Square fills that gap naturally. Since the crab is served as a single dish here, the most common pairing for two is a KRW 20,000 sashimi set meal with one plate of crab added, while four people put the crab on top of a small assorted platter at KRW 60,000 (about USD 43) and get a different table from the first lunch. Eight out of ten guests eat the legs first and mix the shell last, but flip that around and open the shell first, and the marinade will not run all over the table. If your train home leaves around 3 PM, this lunch becomes the last meal of your two days.

Arriving before 6:30 PM is the surest way in for dinner. After sunset, the coal-fire grilled hagfish sign lights up on the front of the restaurant on Jagalchi Haean-ro and the fish tanks below it glow, so walking 220m from Jagalchi Station Exit 2, that sign is the first thing you see. Weekend dinner at 7 PM is the busiest, and arriving right then can mean waiting around 15 minutes on some days, while before 6:30 or after 8 you are seated almost immediately. For four or more, calling +82-10-8998-4803 thirty minutes before you arrive holds the seat you want on either the first or second floor. With 190 seats across the two floors, group dinners are possible, and many families ask for the roomier tables upstairs. About three in ten guests who eat their first dinner here come back for lunch the next day too, and the reason is simple. Being three stops from Busan Station makes it easy to return whether you are staying in Nampo-dong or Seomyeon, and the menu is wide enough to get two completely different meals. By taxi, it is about 10 minutes and KRW 6,000 to 8,000 (about USD 4 to 6) from Busan Station, or about 20 minutes and KRW 12,000 to 15,000 (about USD 9 to 11) from Seomyeon.

Food for five meals comes to roughly KRW 150,000 (about USD 109) for two people and roughly KRW 280,000 (about USD 203) for four. Here is the math. For two: two sashimi set meals for the first lunch at KRW 40,000, two grilled fish set meals for dinner at KRW 30,000, a small spicy rockfish stew at night for KRW 50,000, and on the second morning two bowls of cod soup at KRW 30,000 instead of two bowls of abalone porridge at KRW 40,000, which brings you to KRW 150,000, and adding the soy-marinated crab lunch at KRW 30,000 makes KRW 180,000 (about USD 130). For four: a medium sashimi platter for the first lunch at KRW 80,000, a small sashimi platter at KRW 60,000 plus two grilled fish set meals at KRW 30,000 for dinner, a small stew at night for KRW 50,000, four cod soups the next morning at KRW 60,000 and crab for lunch at KRW 30,000, which lands around KRW 310,000 (about USD 225). Drinks are extra, and every price follows fixed-size pricing, so nothing shifts on the day. If you want premium wild-caught sashimi, it starts at KRW 80,000 (about USD 58) as a daily-selection price, bringing in species like starry flounder or stone flounder, and you simply swap it in for the small platter at the first dinner. For guests on a tight budget, the restaurant's Jagalchi veteran recommends a sashimi set meal at lunch and a grilled fish set meal at dinner. Two set meals at KRW 15,000 to 20,000 per person still let you taste both sashimi and grilled fish.