The Millak Raw Fish Center does not look like the best dinner in Busan. It is a working fish market at the unfashionable north end of Gwangalli Beach — concrete floors, tanks, rubber boots. But its rooftop might be the best table in Korea.
The System
The ground floor is all tanks and vendors, a smaller and less touristed Jagalchi. I picked a flounder — the vendor held up two fingers on each hand: 20,000 won. She cleaned it, wrapped it, and pointed me at the stairs. Up one flight, past the indoor seating, out onto the roof: a terrace of plastic tables and stools facing the water, the Gwangan Bridge spanning the whole view like it was put there for the diners.
The setting fee was 5,000 won a head. For that they brought the fish sliced and fanned on a plate, lettuce and perilla leaves, sliced garlic, gochujang, a bowl of rice, and — later, when I asked — the maeuntang, the head and bones boiled into a spicy red stew that arrived still bubbling.
The Show
I timed it accidentally and perfectly. The sun dropped behind the ridge as I ate, the bridge lights came on in stages — white, then shifting colors — and the beach below filled with people doing exactly what I was doing, minus the fish. A bottle of soju from the market's corner fridge was 5,000 won. The whole meal for one, with the view and the stew and the beer I added later, came to about 35,000 won.
Why It Beats the Restaurants
Every restaurant along the Gwangalli strip sells the same view at three times the price, behind glass. At Millak you are outside, on a plastic stool, eating fish that was swimming an hour ago, with the bridge doing its light show for free. The locals at the next table — three generations sharing two fish and a lot of soju — nodded at my spread approvingly. "Jal meokgesseumnida," I said when I left, the only phrase the situation required.
Go at sunset. Buy the fish downstairs. Take the stairs to the roof. It is the best dinner in Busan and it is not close.