Gran Gusto is a well-known Italian restaurant that even got two ribbons in the Blue Ribbon guide. I went to its opening party and dropped by a few times early on, but lately I hadn’t had a reason to go, for various reasons. Funny how a place you know too well is exactly the one you stop visiting. But that day there was nowhere else nearby to eat, so I stopped in for the first time in a while.
I ordered the dinner course the place is most famous for, which is excellent value for the money. It’s about 40,000 won, and I honestly wondered whether such a radically low price could really work as a dinner course at a fine-dining Italian restaurant like this.
Table setting
There was a napkin tied with a ribbon, but it didn’t make it into the photo
Focaccia
Just so-so..
A starter of salad + mushroom and so on
Considering the price, I can’t say a word against it. As usual I didn’t photograph the menu, so I don’t know the proper names. But now that my camera handles high ISO, starting with the posts that go up a month from now I probably won’t be forgetting the menu so often. (Wishful thinking, though)
Calamari rings
Fried stuff like this somehow doesn’t feel very Italian, but it wasn’t bad.
Mushroom soup
This one was a real miss.. it made me wonder why a dish like this was on the menu at all. As I wrote in my post on Edward Kwon’s The Spice, my view is that in fine dining it’s better to leave out dishes that fail than to add signature dishes, but this place seems to have a somewhat different concept.
Seafood risotto
Not part of the course; we ordered it separately. I didn’t try it so I can’t say, but the portion was really big.
The signature dish, mackerel pasta..
This is probably the most famous dish here, and you can get it with the 40,000-won dinner. I see that as a big plus for the place, and it’s probably why it’s popular. But for my taste this mackerel pasta was pretty weak. Of course this isn’t a restaurant by the sea, so for what it is it’s actually decent, but I’m living near the coast right now, you see. Right by the East Sea, no less.. It’s so far from the big mackerel fillets I usually eat that I can’t really call it delicious, but compared with other pasta places in Seoul it seemed to have the edge..
Grilled pork shoulder
I think it was Jeju pork, and I really liked this main. Great quality ingredients, cooked just right, and the spices were used well to bring out the flavor. Mind you, Koreans don’t count anything but a beef steak as a main.
Yogurt ice cream for dessert
Yogurt ice cream is something I love, so even though it’s not a special dessert, I enjoyed it. Gran Gusto is a good restaurant overall, and since it has affordable menus, it’s all the better as an easy place to drop by on days like this when there’s nowhere much to eat. But next time I’ll try going when there’s a chef’s special dinner. ^_^