The start of today was Not Good. Not in the sense that I was feeling the after-effects of weekend-consumed alcohol and too little sleep (honest I wasn’t, I promise~), more in the sense that Things Happened and it left me in a rather awkward situation and a very frustrated mood. And obviously the best way to relieve that sort of mood is to go to the pretty places and eat food. Obviously.
Sinsa was the place of choice, naturally, but then the problems with where/what to eat arose. See, I am notoriously indecisive when it comes to food, and add that to an irrational dislike of actually trying new places even though I really really want to… makes for a lot of frustration on the part of whoever I’m getting food with. (Sorry in advance if you ever meet me and we go for food…) Thankfully, if you can call two people having that trait at all thankful, Matilda has pretty much exactly the same mindset, so we end up wandering around places for ages until one of us goes ‘ah f*ck it let’s just try here’. And those places are generally The Best.
Ok I think that’s a long-winded enough intro into how we ended up at Public House+ in Garosugil. Not to be confused with Public House. Nope. This restaurant is in the basement. There was a little bit of menu coercing involved by the staff as we stood, indecisive as ever, by the menu outside, tossing back ‘but do we really want to eat here’ ‘what do you think?’ ‘I don’t mind’s back and forth. In the end, we did say yes, and the staff happily took us downstairs into the restaurant and made us feel really welcome. It was lovely.
We picked a table and the we were brought our menus, fully expecting to be left alone to choose our food, but our waiter sat down on the cube poof at the end of our table and explained the menu to us, after asking if we spoke korean. He also told us what dishes were really good in each section of the menu (pizza, pasta, gratin, sets, and drinks – a general Italian-style set up).
Initially, we ordered a pepperoni pizza – adventurous, I know – meat gratin and two of their mojito’s (who doesn’t like a bit of alcohol when they’ve had a stressful day), but decided to change the gratin to a carbonara dish when our waiter returned saying that the pizza and the gratin would be too much tomato.
Can we just take a minute to appreciate the fact that this place knows that tomato sauce belongs on a pizza. Please. Can we.
Ok.
As service, we also got to pick a salad (yay!), so we chose the Ricotta cheese.
The salad was the first thing to arrive (and we were told, very proudly, that our waiter made it himself, bless), and they waited for me to take pictures before the cut the bread. .
Those dishes were so huge it was impossible for me to get all three of them in the same shot, but oh my goodness the food was so good. Matilda asked me which was my favourite dish and I literally sat thinking for a good three minutes because the Carbonara was like, italian carbonara, the pizza was delish, and the salad was soooo tasttyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. (Still picked the salad though.)
All in all, a very good dining experience, reasonably priced at under 50,000won for two dishes and two cocktails. Plus the staff were so attentive and generally lovely, and even though there were hardly any other diners (we dined late, as in, super late), the atmosphere was still really good. And they were projecting Nanny McPhee 2 onto the wall directly above our heads, I mean, how can you not love a restaurant that does that?????
To find Public House+ you need to be on the street that runs parallel with the main garosugil street (Deli Heinzburg/Beyond Closet/Grill5 Taco street), and it’s in the middle sort of section of that street. Terrible directions, I know, but they do have a menu outside, and a quite daunting looking, narrow entryway. Also Neon Signs. Lights will guiiiiiiide you to an inevitable food coma.
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