Lassagne

I'm a big fan of lasagna, especially al forno. However most italian restaurants in korea offer only koreanised, so called 'oven spagetthi', which are eatable but nothing more.
You might understand how surprised i was when i found this instant Lasagna al Forno at Homeplus:

For around 5000 won you get 280g lasagna and an obscene amount of calories ^^. My expectations were not high because mostly pre made stuff is only convenient but not authentic. However this one blew me away. Good strong tomato sauce, much cheese which might even be mozzarella, al dente pasta plates in the middle and lo and behold: béchamel sauce under the cheese. Especially the Béchamel under the cheese was very unexpected (until now i only found one restaurant in seoul making their lasagna properly with béchamel).

In clonclusion i can say this one is well worth its price. Less then 300g doesn't sound like much but its very heavy and therefore enough for one person. The overall taste is very nice but of course not as good as a good fresh lasagna. However compared to the common oven spaghetti this dish is clearly better.

Try it out :)

The Kitchen

When looking for italian food on the gwanak campus one has two choices: the fancy and expensive restaurant oposit the 501 building, or the much more resonable priced 'The Kitchen' behind the sports field.

They serve sanwhiches (far too small), burgers (definetly too small), pizza (also too small), pasta (a bit small) and risoto (guess what: not to small ^^).

While all things are pretty good, most dishes are just too small. To walk away from the kitchen well fed, as a man one would have to order around 3 sandwhiches or 2 burger minimum. However if one is on a diet or genereally likes smaller servings i would recomend the burger. Nothing fancy here but pretty decent meat.

The pasta is pretty good but nothing special, they offer the common fare of cream sauce, seafood and tomato sauces. Where the kitchen excells are the risotto. They are creamy, with some bite to the rice grains, well spiced and the servings are very fair. For less than 6000 won they are a good meal. Especially i would like to recomend the tomato / spinach / bacon risotto.

As far as i know the kitchen opens only for meal times, so no food before 11.30 am. The interior is nice but its often a bit crowded and noisy. But still until now the best risotto i had in seoul.

p.s. you also can find the location here