This is already a month-old story -_- I came back to Korea for a Chuseok special, and as you know, around the big holidays pretty much everywhere shuts down, so I always end up agonizing over where to eat. A few places open in the days before and after Chuseok, but very few restaurants actually open on Chuseok day itself. That’s when Itaewon is the place you can count on. Chuseok basically doesn’t exist abroad, so if anything it seemed even busier over the holiday. Since I was heading all the way to Itaewon anyway, I tried booking The Spice, Edward Kwon’s place that’s been making a big splash lately. I’d heard it was doing so well these days that reservations were hard to get, but maybe because it was Chuseok, I got one with no trouble at all.
The front entrance.
The building looks great. I thought it was pretty big for a first restaurant (it is his first, right..?), but once inside it turned out only the ground floor is the restaurant-and-bar. The upper floors look like they’re used as offices, though I didn’t check. The interior is modern, but in a way casual. You could call it trendy. It’s less a place for a calm meal and more a place for cheerful eating and drinking, I’d say.
The napkin
He’s put his own initials on it.. Places like Joël Robuchon or Pierre Gagnaire use the chef’s name as the restaurant’s name, but I wonder whether that kind of marketing works in Korea too.. Also, I hardly ever watch Korean TV or media, so I had no idea, but apparently he’s quite a famous guy.
Today’s wine
I ordered the dinner that came to a bit over 70,000 won including VAT and a glass of wine. There were other courses, but only this one came with the pastry chef’s special dessert. – I think I’ve mentioned before that dessert is how I pick my courses – This course limits the dishes to two choices, so if you go as a pair you can each get one and try everything. Cutting down on the agonizing like that is part of the service, too. They seemed to have a good handle on how Korean diners like to order lots of different things and share. I can’t say 70,000 won is super cheap, but it’s not bad. Especially for Korea.
Generous with the wine, too
They pour it right to the brim.. But they don’t seem to know much about the formalities. The glasses, the way they pour.. Probably because their business is aimed mostly at ordinary customers. They’d have a hard time getting good marks from fussy gourmets. The wine itself was just so-so.. House wine by the glass is always like that, though..
Pea soup
I forgot to photograph the menu again that day. So although the dishes had fancy French-style names, I’ll just call them whatever I like. The cooking itself is really quite good. With a cold pea soup, the point is bringing out the fresh taste you get from that vivid green, and it came through nicely. It’s not an expensive ingredient, but you can’t help being satisfied.
Bread
Plenty of varieties, but the taste is just so-so. You see restaurants specializing in bread here and there lately, but it’s not a bakery, so I wonder if they really need to go that far.. All I’d ask is that they serve some whole-grain bread for health’s sake.
A salad with onion or maybe garlic in it
The arrangement of the ingredients is fun. It just tastes like salad.
The foie gras dish
I’ve eaten so much foie gras that I’m sick of it, so it didn’t particularly move me, but it was perfectly decent.
Lobster ravioli
They brought out the flavor of the ingredients well. Cut it open and it’s generously filled. On top of that, the shellfish broth was really rich. Somehow, though, it reminded me of mandu-guk (dumpling soup) plus kkotge-tang (blue crab stew).
The shrimp dish
This one was good too, the shrimp nice and plump..
Braised beef
Finally the main arrived. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but this tastes exactly like galbitang. I wondered if it was because it was a Chuseok special.. Somehow the whole menu felt geared toward Korean food. Just as Westerners eat with wine on the table, Koreans always have a soup when they eat rice. Looking at how today’s dishes were built, they seemed to focus on soup rather than sauce. It’s cooking that would appeal even more to Koreans, who are more used to Korean food than Western food. A foreigner eating this in Korea would probably find it quite unusual. It’s a nice style of cooking, but it wasn’t spicy at all.. Makes me think they named the restaurant a bit carelessly..
Lamb steak
The presentation, with things like the little turnips, was really cute. It tasted great, too.. I go to 2chef in Hongdae a lot these days so I’m fairly used to lamb, and at this quality it wouldn’t fall short anywhere. It’s very satisfying aesthetically as well. A place like this would be fun for an event or a date. Though at my age, would any of the women I meet actually like this kind of cutesy stuff..
Health juice
They told me to down it in one shot, but um.. -_- the taste was a bit.. It made me feel I don’t really want to be healthy if this is what it takes.. Which is why I’ve bought some aojiru and still haven’t managed to drink it..
Dessert
The dessert I’d been waiting for finally came out, but only the chocolate + plum jelly at the bottom right was reasonably tasty, and the rest was below average. It fell well short of being a pastry chef’s special. If this was it, I might have been better off skipping dessert..
Chamomile
A formal course isn’t complete without tea. I always order herbal tea, and in Japanese restaurants even the herbal tea is really good. But when I drink it back in Korea, it all tastes like disposable tea bags.
Coffee
The logo’s here too.. Should I call this good marketing..
Petits fours
These were very disappointing too, for a dessert specialist like me.
Overall, apart from the dessert, all the food was decent, with no dish that really fell flat. Even the dessert seemed about Korean average. That kind of decency may not appeal much to gourmets, but I actually think that decency is the very reason fine dining exists. In life there are gatherings and occasions where you can’t afford a mistake, and people you really want to treat well. It’d be a real problem if some strange dish or terrible service turned up in the middle of an important gathering. If you’re not interested in merely decent food and want something tasty for cheap, you can just go to a good neighborhood spot or a place known for what’s in season..
The service felt a bit lacking, but since this place bills itself as casual dining anyway, I don’t think that’s a big problem. If he opens a fine-dining restaurant next, I’ll expect proper service then. I don’t know much about the controversy over his résumé so I have nothing to say there, but you could feel his hotel-restaurant experience in the cooking. Not in the sense of chasing the ultimate flavor, but in the sense of treating cooking as a kind of service. There aren’t many restaurants even at this level in Korea, so it’s handy to know about in all sorts of ways.