Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Italian food Korean style

In Korea, it can be expected, that an outing to a restaurant, will never, and I repeat NEVER, be like a meal at home, in America.  At the tail end of my birthday weekend, we went to dinner at an Italian restaurant.  I'm always hesitant to go to an Italian restaurant in Korea, because they always Koreanize it and never for the better.  For one thing, instead of bread sticks before the meal, they provide something pickled.  Because its an Italian restaurant they don't give you kimchi which they would prefer, but as a substitute, they provide sweet pickles, because as we all know, that's very Italian.  Then, most of the time, their spaghetti dishes are sweet, sickly sweet.  This restaurant was better than most for which I was immensely grateful, although they did have some quirks.  The pizza, instead of being made on pizza dough was made on many layers of pastry sheets, and with a side of honey to dip the crust in.  Also, when they brought the salad which was meant for Mark only,  they set it out for the whole table to share.  Because it seemed that it was meant for the table, we assumed it was complimentary.  It turns out, our assumption was incorrect. And when Dee ordered her coke, they brought a tiny can and six straws in case we all wanted to share.  Fun times in Korea!
sweet pickles

If we all had shared this coke, I think we would have had one sip a piece.

the pizza with the honey

1 comment:

Peter said...

I think that pizza actually sounds delicious. The sweet pickles, however, I would like to know what country is actually responsible for that invention (Apparently the Korean's think it was the Italians but I'm not convinced...) so that I can avoid going there. :o)