Myunggebawi hwejip (명게바워 횟집)

Location: Kangneung, South Korea

Category: Korean, seafood

Price: $$$ (~15,000 W only because we didn't order a lot)

Food: C

Atmosphere: A

Service: B
Overall: B-

Review: I went to Kangneung, near the coast, this past weekend with my friends Hanna, Lisa, Niki, Ludolf and Jin and had a great time on the beach.  With regards to this specific restaurant, location-wise, this fish place was the closest place to our hotel so we had a quick lunch there.  The restaurant had a great view:

as you can see, the restaurant was literally right on the beach, we decided to sit outdoors in the patio area and enjoy the nice cool ocean breezes.  However, I was a bit disappointed with the food, as it seems overpriced and not as good as it should have been.  We ordered a grilled mackerel which was pretty delicious actually:

 The mackerel was cooked well, nice and tender and fatty.  We did find though that most of the grilled fish that we encountered in Kangneung was quite delicious, but I would say this was likely worth it, quite large, though a bit expensive (~W 15,000).  

Next we also ordered a meuntang, or spicy soup.  We ordered a large one for the whole group.  However, it was really expensive (~W 50,000) and it seemed that they just push up the prices because the view is so nice.  It was also too spicy to the degree that you couldn't really taste the different flavors in the soup.  We found later that a lot of places in the area give the meuntang as a service after ordering sashimi.  It was not a bad meal all in all, but comparatively with later meals, it didn't seem worth the price, particularly because later on on in the night, we negotiated all you can eat sashimi, grilled clams, and meuntang all for ~W 100,000, which was more than enough for 6 people to eat.  Here are some additional photos of the soup, which had all the necessary ingredients, just the flavoring was off:

here's a close up, where you can see the silver shield protecting our soup from the ocean wind

here's a close up in my bowl:

As you can see, the soup is quite red.  that in itself is not such a big deal, but it was so spicy you couldn't really taste any of the vegetables or fish or anything....and I eat spicy food pretty well!  

The really great thing about this place though was actually the panchan, the little side dishes.  They made some regional ones, potentially because it was low season and so they were trying to give better service than usual.  I always like trying different regional foods, and here they gave us some panchan from the sea, which was made out of seaweed, whichi is shown on the left here.

They also had another one that was made out of some mountain vegetable even though it looked like kenyip, which is commonly used in korean food.  This was also quite tasty.  

They had some kimchis as well, like kkakdugi, which I didn't really think much of honestly.  It was overripe and not very tasty.

So although this wasn't a rave review for the restaurant, it did have a great view, especially during the daytime.  Here is the contact info (sorry for the sideways image)

Petra

Location: Itaewon, South Korea

Category: Middle Eastern

Price: $$ (~30,000 W)

Food: A

Atmosphere: B

Service: B
Overall: A

Review: I had a craving for middle eastern food today so I went to lunch with my friend Hanna and we went to Petra.  This was my second time going there and the food was quite tasty.  The first time I went I really liked it because the owner seemed really nice.  This time he didn't remember me so I was sad, even though it was less than a week ago.  It's ok though, they have like a million people in and out of there all the time.  He did give me like these little desserts and tea from Kuwait last time though!  from his friend.


Anyhow, enough about that, on to the food!!  Both times I had tabouli, and it was sooooooooo tasty.  I love parsley.  I think I could turn into a rabbit just so I could eat parsley all day.  And cilantro.  I figure rabbits eat cilantro and parsley right?

and for the close up:

Unfortunately for this shot, I forgot to take a picture until we had almost eaten half of it, but you get the picture.  I was pretty hungry....We also ordered falafel which tasted incredible with the tabouli (tabouli in fact was his recommendation and it was quite good)

We also ordered the mix of meats kebabs (chicken, beef, lamb) which proved to be wayyy too much food:

So delish!  Of course, we ate them with the provided flat bread (which I suspect is tortilla, but it still tastes very very good together):

and altogether now:

AND because I get really annoyed with blogs that have no information on how to get to the freaking place, I decided here on out that I would take pics of the business cards as well, with any provided map information so anyone else who is looking at this blog can figure out how to get there:

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.