Mad for garlic, Gangnam Seoul South Korea.

Me and my Korean friend stopped into Mad for Garlic as I was in the mood to sit down in a nice restaurant and share a delicious meal over a glass of wine. They have several locations across Seoul (possibly across South Korea) but we ended up at Apgujeong location. This is a very trendy and fashionable district with brand name shops such as Luis Vutton, Rolls Royce and many others that most individuals can only dream to afford. It has a large amount of fine dinning restaurants and coffee shops and when wandering this neighborhood you definitely get the impression that you’re in a affluent part of Seoul.

Here we have the entrance to Mad for Garlic, the stairs going down (You can see my Korean friend near the bottom of the stairs) and a display of wines which was to the left on the way down the stairs:

We sat down and ordered a glass of white wine to enjoy while we looked over the menu and soaked up the atmosphere.  Here we have a few shots of the restaurant from our table:

Although my Korean friend thought it was too much food for just the two of us we ended up ordering a 4 course meal that came with two glasses of red wine for approximately 62 000 won if memory serves me well (I didn’t write down the cost of the meal at the time, sorry to anyone wondering exactly how much it was.  But that’s approximately 62 $ Canadian if my memory serves me well.).  The meal would of easily fed three to four individuals.

I was in the mood to try a few different dishes from this place which is why I convinced my Korean friend that we should order the four course meal.  The first dish was a dyi Caesar salad in the sense that you had to cut up the lettuce leaves yourself.  Not an easy task but I’m happy to say we got it done without making any sort of mess.  The dressing had a distinctive taste which at first I didn’t associate with a “ceasar salad” but my Korean friend pointed out that this was perhaps because it had a large amount of garlic in it.  We ate up most of the salad with my friend warning me to keep room for the other three dishes that were on their way.  My apology for the slightly blurry pictures I didn’t notice they were out of focus when taken.  Notice the dressing on the bottom part of the plate:

The salad was followed by a pasta dish.  This looked to me like it was a simple dish consisting of some slightly “al dente” pasta, what I suspect was olive oil, roasted garlic chips and some hot spices.  Wikipedia describes al dente pasta (and a few other dishes) as dishes that have been cooked so as to be firm but not hard.  The dish was definitely hot on the tongue and left you wanting to drink some liquids to refresh your palette.  That being said we devoured the whole thing and by the time the next dish arrived the hotness had dissipated (it was almost completly gone).

Here’s the pasta in question:

Then came the very thin crust Gorgonzola and garlic pizza.  For those of you new to this blog you may not be aware that I’m a pizza fanatic.  The Gorgonzola cheese wasn’t too overpowering and mixed well with the garlic.  The crust in my opinion was just a little too thin and had soaked up much of the oil from the cheese.  The combination of the thin, slightly doughy crust and the grease from the cheese made this dish extremely heavy.  After having tried a few bites “as is” I then dipped the next few pieces into the side dish that you can see included in the pictures below.  Although I’m not exactly certain what was in the dish it had a slightly honey taste but was much more fluid than honey.  I suspect that it was perhaps a watered down honey of some type (if that’s even possible).

That being said when you dipped a piece of pizza into the sauce it really mixed well with cheese, garlic and dough from the pizza.  It did nothing to alleviate the heaviness of the dish but it sure tasted good!  The above being said If I had to honestly review the pizza I’d have to say it left me a little disappointed.

If memory serves we well we only ate a few pieces of the pizza as we wanted to make certain we had enough room for the last dish; the garlic hug steak.  The steak in question came stuffed with garlic and covered in a creamy cheese sauce that included onions and some small red peppers.  This was definitely the best of the dishes we had this evening and it was devoured quickly.  If you have a chance to try one dish at this restaurant make it the garlic hug steak!  Below you have a picture of the already cut in half steak and a smaller piece on one of the plates as well as a picture of the chefs cleaning the kitchen as we were leaving:

We finished off the night with a lazy walk along the Han river at night.  My Korean friend really enjoyed this as it’s something she doesn’t often have the time to do:

It also gave us a chance to capture what is one of my favorites pictures of the trip to date:

I realize some of the above pictures of the food were a little out of focus and i’d like to apologize.  I always try to make certain the pictures of the food I talk about are well taken but for one reason or another I must not have noticed that they were slightly out of focus due to the lighting at the restaurant.

The total for the 4 course meal and two glasses of white wine was 90 000 won (about 90$ Canadian).

Regards,


mtl_dokkaebi