The Kitchen

Location: Chungdam-dong, South Korea

Category: Italian

Price: $$$ (~50,000 W)

Food: A

Atmosphere: A

Service: B
Overall: A

Review: The successful "the Kitchen" in Japan makes its foray into Korea and proves that the Japanese-Italian fusion works well in both countries.  

We went there for my friend Peter's 40th birthday as a kind of off-the-beaten-trail (e.g., not Itaewon) and nicer version of dinner we generally have as a group.  Although much more expensive than the average Korean restaurant, as far as Italian restaurants go in Seoul, this was definitely among the best.  They had fresh proscuitto, which I've never seen in Korea (Peter here demonstrates the skill of the chefs, we were deliberating if they had cut it into a heart-shape on purpose...):

They had a great veranda area, wide open space, in fact much better use of space in general with an open kitchen than anywhere else I had seen.  They also had comfortable couches along the side, which I'm told are extremely difficult to reserve ahead of time, why I'm not exactly sure.  maybe because you like to be comfortable cushioned while you eat?  I'm generally of the camp where having better access to food (not laid back in a couch) is more important, but hey, that's me.  Most of the waiters are Japanese.  Not that has anything to do with the review, just an interesting fact to note.

They had this great rotisserie chicken dish that I ordered...was going to go with the seafood soup, but at 50,000 won per bowl, it just seemed a *little* too much to dish out for soup:

It was pretty much perfectly cooked, tender and pink on the inside, but not undercooked, with a nice roasted skin. The rosemary with olive oil and lemon were also nice adds:

My friend Lisa ordered a yummy spaghetti along with a rockfish, which I wasn't able to get pics of.  The spaghetti was tasty though, perfectly al denti with plentiful seafood to choose from.  Exceptional olive oil as well.

They also had delicious sides, fried zucchini flowers (can we say double YUM?), mashed potatos and spinach are the ones I was able to sample.

Fried zucchini deliciousness here along with ok spinach.  It wasn't bad spinach, I just didn't like it as much as a zucchini.  I could use some right now....

The mashed potato was also ok.  Honestly I've had better at Thanksgiving when I think about it.  But the consistency and presentation was pretty interesting considering it was almost like polenta:

All in all, quite a delicious experience.  The only potentially bad point of the night was in the service.  They served things not all at the same time (e.g., our mains) and forgot about one of our sides (was really looking forward to that sauteed mushroom).  The sides are also actually pretty expensive, though the mains are reasonable.  We did expect more from the sides I recall.  But they did apologize and give us a free mashed potato I think.