Last week my father came to visit me in Seoul. Before left he gave us 160,000 won to have a nice meal in a restaurant on my boyfriend’s birthday. “Go somewhere really nice like a hotel restaurant,” he said.
My boyfriend tried to scare me by suggesting raw fish at the seaside. “I’ll make sure they chop the head off and don’t give you a live one.”
I had a feeling he was trying to wind me up because he knows travelling for hours to eat something like that isn’t my cup of tea. I don’t understand anyone who will spend hours in the car for the sake of a simple meal.
I stayed quiet because it was his birthday and I didn’t want to stop him choosing what he wanted. I went to the loo and tied my shoes up hoping that it was a joke but not saying anything. By the time we were waiting for the lift I couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Don’t you fancy a nice hotel restaurant in the city centre? The Somerset Palace Hotel (near Anguk station) has very good German food.” I went there last week with Dad and thoroughly enjoyed my meal.
Eventually we decided on the Italian restaurant at the Hyundai shopping centre in Mok-dong. Omokgyo station on line 5 is located directly underneath it so on a rainy day you don’t even have to get wet. We went there in the car and had a cross 15 minutes trying to find the floor with the restaurants on it. The first lift we found took us up to a swanky sports club well out of our budget.
Finally we found the restaurant area, which has Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Italian restaurants. I realised that I had overinflated the poshness of the place in my imagination. It was a little more expensive than the places we usually visit, two spaghetti carbonaras with 2 cokes set us back 33,000 won, but essentially it was just an upmarket shopping centre food court.
We ate at a place called Buon Posto. It was clearly a popular choice because we had to wait 10 minutes for a table. Once inside you can see the chefs at work in a sushi bar style kitchen and watch the shoppers go by through the glass windows that make the outer walls of the restaurant. My one criticism of the interior was that the air conditioning was on too high a setting so we were a little cold.
When the pasta arrived we weren’t disappointed. It had a good breadth of flavour with just the right amount of black pepper. The spaghetti looked cheap but was actually the best I’ve had in Korea because it actually tasted of something. My boyfriend found it too creamy for his Korean palate, but that’s not surprising because when properly cooked in Italy, carbonara can be quite a heavy dish.
We left feeling pleased that we had saved enough money for another nice meal another day.
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