The siren song of Gubei calls again! For those of us living across Shanghai, Gubei district, famed for its Koreatown and its stretch of accessible Japanese restaurants, offers a compelling lure: a meal worth the journey.
Here’s one reliable Korean restaurant specializing in marinated crab, ganjang gejang.
Shanghai’s Koreatown: Sun Jia Marinated Crab
Sun Jia has been around for over 30 years, a claim written in large bold font on their menu. They specialize in ganjang gejang, Korean style marinated crab. Traditionally, this dish was made by marinating live crabs in a seasoning sauce, where they would cure in the marinade.
For modern food safety reasons, this practice has largely been replaced; the crabs are now typically killed, cleaned, and often frozen or blanched before marination.
Sun Jia has two flavors, one the traditional soy sauce based brine, and the other in a spicy gochujang. While they also have abalone, prawns, and even salmon sashimi done in the same brine, the crabs are the ones to get.
They have a set priced at ¥680, and it’s the best value offer, made for 2-3 to share. Literally every table orders a set, and most if not all place it via Dianping, which gets you some kuai shaved off your bill. The set includes two brined crabs, one crab with spicy marinade, five prawns, grilled fish, a rice dish with roe, one plain rice, refillable banchan, and seaweed. Each person also gets one bowl of congee that arrives at the start of the meal.
There is a method to eating the marinated blue crab.
First, the body: suck out the roe and meat as you would from a prawn head. Connoisseurs will find themselves elbows deep trying to extract every last unctuous morsel from these shells, right down to the legs.
(Note: If the richness of sea urchin or buttery crab roe isn’t for you, perhaps skip this place.)
Speaking of shells, that’s where more magic is. Scrape the roe from the corners, then add rice and a few spoons of the potent marinade, and mix it within the shell. A sheet of seaweed, a generous pile of the mixture, and you have an umami bomb wrapped and ready.
The spicy version is basically the same crab with a savory-spicy sauce that’s not dissimilar to gochujang.
The flying fish roe rice is mixed tableside. It’s a nice little intermission between savory bites of crab.
They also have other dishes on the menu, including rice bowls, marinated meat dishes, soups, egg soufflés, and noodles. Add on a Seafood Pancake (¥68) for good measure.
Hot Tip: Get there early if you want to avoid waiting for a table.
I went to the longest standing location on Hongxing Lu, an outlet that’s so popular that they added a waiting area just below the restaurant by the carpark. They also have a branch in
Putuo.
Sun Jia Marinated Crab (孙家酱蟹)
Click here for the listing.
