Jinmi: North America's first soy sauce-marinated crab spot in Vancouver

Many may be familiar with the name Jinmi, as it has been serving soy sauce-marinated crab since 2020 through its online store. Now, it has opened its first brick-and-mortar location, making it the first soy-marinated crab restaurant in North America. And thankfully, it’s located right here in Vancouver.

We love a first here at Dished, so you know we needed to go and check it out. Here are our honest thoughts on the new Korean soul food restaurant Jinmi.

The interior of the restaurant was beautiful, with plenty of natural light and wood accents. And as much as we could’ve spent time admiring it, we were hungry and ready to devour some Korean soul food.

While we were there mainly for the soy-marinated female roe crab, we also ended up ordering the seafood pancake, which was the first item to come out.

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Our waitress took the time to explain each part of the dish, which was much appreciated. It had Korean leeks, grilled octopus and shrimp, and a citron mustard and mayonnaise sauce, and let us tell you, it was delicious. The octopus was spicy, but combined with the sauce, it balanced everything out. We would come back just for this dish.

But the marinated crab was on a totally other level. The main ingredient in this soy marinade is, of course, soy sauce. But on its website, Jinmi said this marinade is made with “23 other ingredients, featuring imported Korean soybean and red pepper pastes.”

When the dish arrived, we were presented with gloves and a bowl for our leftover crab shells. We were then told to simply squeeze the meat out of the claws and eat it that way, which was tasty. But the main part of the crab was also served with a side of rice.

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We were instructed to scrape the meat out and mix our rice right into the crab shell to soak up all that delicious marinade and crab meat. We were also given two different kinds of seaweed sheets to eat with the rice-crab mixture.

Everything was delicious, and the crab had this rich, umami flavour we just loved. Some people may be turned away at the thought of eating raw crab, but if you give it a chance, we promise it’s worth it. If you’re a fan of any kind of seafood, you’re going to love this.

The crab did set us back about $45, but when you consider how long the process takes to make this delicacy (also that you’re eating fresh crab), we’d consider this pretty standard.

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There are multiple different soy sauce-marinated items on the menu as well. We were told that the spicy marinated crab was popular, but you can also find soy sauce-marinated salmon, shrimp, and female prawns.

So is Jinmi worth the visit? If you couldn’t already tell, we definitely think so.

Jinmi is now open, and you can visit from 4 to 11 pm Thursday through Sunday and 4 to 10 pm Monday through Wednesday.

Jinmi

Address: 854 Denman Street, Vancouver

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