Mi Piace is a restaurant that has been in business in Cheongdam-dong for a long time. In a neighborhood like Cheongdam-dong, where so many restaurants get popular and then vanish, the simple fact that it has survived for more than ten years is pretty impressive. With March coming around, I quietly dropped by.

The table

The atmosphere is nice.

A glass of white wine

The wine by the glass was well priced and tasty.

Bread

It came out nicely warmed.

Grilled abalone

When the ingredients are this good, the simpler the cooking, the better it tastes. I am not really that fond of abalone, but I enjoyed this.

This visit was already two months ago and I did not photograph the menu, so I cannot quite remember the names of the dishes. I really should always shoot the menu, but somehow I never find the time. I used to refer to blog posts other people had written before me, but these days it feels like there are far fewer blogs worth consulting. It seems everyone is only on Twitter now. Of course, Twitter has been my main outlet for a long time too.

Onion soup

The cold days were still dragging on back then, so the hot soup tasted even better.

Fried mozzarella cheese

It was fried to a chewy texture and surprisingly good.

Pie

There was meat and vegetables inside, and it was baked nicely. Rather than any details of the flavor, all I remember is that it was somehow delicious.

Pickles come out.

And the bottarga pasta

Bottarga pasta seems to be all the rage these days. It is hard for pasta with fish roe in it to taste bad, and as expected it was reliably good. The pasta felt a touch overcooked, but that is only because Koreans tend to dislike al dente.

The salty bottarga made it feel like a drinking snack, but I had decided to take it easy on the booze that day.

Steak

The finale of a standard course meal. This is perfectly decent. I was quite full by this point, and I suspect the generous portions and good ingredients are the secret to how Mi Piace has lasted so long.

Dessert

They called it a cream puff, but the pastry on top and bottom was so bland that I only picked out the ice cream in the middle. If it had been whipped cream you could at least get around it by eating quickly, but since it was ice cream you could not rush it, and it went soggy halfway through.

Tea

The food was decent for the price, but the dessert was a bit of a letdown. Having lived in Japan for so long I had forgotten, but it really is not easy to find good dessert in Korea. That is why I was all the more glad about the opening of Lady M. Details are for friends only… just kidding, please wait about a month~

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