Oublier – Forget yourself in this Itaewon station cafe

Sibling love is a strange thing. Growing up with a sibling, you often quarrel a lot in your younger days but find yourself becoming more and more similar to each other in terms of hobbies, music taste and personality. No matter how much you fight, there is a kind of unwritten rule that you automatically make up within 24 hours even if no one utters the words ”sorry”.

So why, you ask me, am I talking about love between a brother and sister in a cafe interview? You might guess it, but the owners of the cafe ”Oublier” are members of the same family and the cafe is their first attempt at running an establishment together. Their past experiences complement each other perfectly. The younger family member, Kenny, is a tea sommelier (I barely knew that profession even existed) and the older sister, Amy, is a patissier with the experience under her belt of having worked together with one of the most famous Korean chefs, recently famous on TV (his name escapes me).

As a tea sommelier, hours upon hours of training and testing lies behind the selection of teas at Oublier. Kenny will be happy to reveal why black teas go well with tangy desserts and oolong tea goes better the cafe’s parade dish – the Cannoli. He will also reveal just exactly what makes oolong tea different from green tea (actually, the answer is the level of oxidation), since in most Westerners minds they are all the same. Usually the owners lets the customers choose either a drink or a dessert they want to try and then recommend the best drink/dessert to accompany that choice.

Being skeptical to wine sommeliers from the get-go, I first took Kenny’s recommendation with a grain of salt. But after trying to Grapefruit Meringue Tart in combination with the Taipei Pine black tea, I noticed how the tea takes the edge off the inherent bitterness of the grapefruit, and I was made into a believer of the tea sommelier profession! You can really taste how fresh the grapefruit in the tart is, and you soon realize how much better Oublier is than your regular run-of-the-mill places like Starbucks Coffee or Angel-in-Us.

While conversing with the owners, I found myself just smelling the cup of tea and letting the aroma enter my sinus cavities and down into my lungs, as if the tea aroma was cleansing my body in a form of catharsis. Oublier’s most famous and most complicated dessert to bake is the Italian Cannoli. It consist of a tube-shaped shell made from dough fried dark brown in the oven and then filled with a mix of mascarpone and/or ricotta cheese. Amy was not satisfied with the cheese you can find from the distributors, so she just decided to make it herself.

Finally, Oublier makes their own fruit drinks, sometimes adding fizz by themselves as well. I sampled a red mango and raspberry drink, and was constantly thinking to myself how many deciliters of fresh fruit actually went into making the drink, since it was very rich and full of flavor.

Oublier is very hidden behind some houses in Itaewon’s residential area, just a few hundred meters away from the other restaurants. Although it might be difficult to spot for potential customers, I think this is one of merits of Oublier. They have a few tables outside as well, and a little corner for pets.This makes Oublier not only a top-notch cafe, but also a great place to take your friends or date for a post-dinner glass of wine or three.

The name ”Oublier” comes from the same verb from French, meaning ”To forget”. It has a few other meanings as well, but for the owner it basically means that when you enter the cafe, the atmosphere will take you to another secluded spot where you can escape your daily worries for a few hours. This, it certainly succeeds in doing.

Info
Business hours: 11:30AM – 11PM (Closed Mondays)
Address: 서울특별시 용산구 이태원로23길 26-5 (Walk out of exit 1, Itawon stn, and take a right just after KFC. Take a left at Moghul Restaurant and a right up the stairs after restaurant My Chelsea. Follow the road for 2-3 minutes while looking at your right side. Soon you will see a building with a dark blue exterior and some big cutlery ornaments. That is your cue that you are at the right place!)
E-mail: conico@hanmail.net
Phone: 02-790-1224

YES Burger – Brand new burger joint by Noksapyeong station

There’s a strip of restaurants n Kyungridan with some of the best pizzas in Seoul, like Trevio and Pizzarium. You’d think, if you open a new restaurant in that area, you better know what you are doing and have some confidence in your cooking. Well, if you tilt your head up, you’ll be able to spot ”Yes Burger” on the 2nd floor in the same area, and the owner knows his stuff. Yes Burger has barely been open for one month, but is already making it’s mark on the burger foodies’ maps.

Upon entering the place, you’ll instantaenously feel at ease thanks to the soothing interior with wooden furnitures, huge vintage speakers and mesmerizing candle ornaments. My eyes also caught a glimpse of the four sauces that every table is equipped with, namely ketchup, honey mustard, Mexican hot sauce Cholula and garlic aoili! It’s a relief not having to worry about having enough ketchup for the fries or having to call the staff over every time you are out of sauce. Here you can drizzle your condiments to your heart’s content.

The owner is a very humble and seemingly kind person who tries his utmost to make the customers feel relaxed and at home. His previous experience of running an Italian restaurant shines through in the additional choices of two different pastas and wines on the menu. Of course, the burgers are the limelight of the menu and there are a few select choices unique to Yes Burger. The burger ’The Gentlemen’ will take your tastebuds on a one-way trip to Bangkok with it’s coconut milk-base that helps make the patty more succulent than most other burgers I have sampled. ’Daddy’s Ben’ is yet another child of the imagination of the chef. Upon opening the French-made bun that is soft on the outside but has been toasted on the inside to give it that crispy layer, the secrets of this particular burger are revealed. Before even realizing what it is, your nose will start to detect a familiar scent, namely peanut butter! Peanut butter, of course, goes well with jam, which is the second secret of the burger. The bacon jam is actually not particularly sweet but still goes well with the slightest of peanut butter flavors that literally melts in your mouth. Last up is the ‘Road House’ which instead of a beef patty has Australian wagyu beef slices sautéed in cream and mushrooms I believe. Add some Swiss cheese and jalapeno to that mix and you have yourself a wonderful burger/sandwich.

The fries are just the right thickness and you can see that they have been deep-fried without peeling the potato to preserve the crispiness. The best part about the Mac n’ Cheese was that the macaroni were still al dente. At first I reckoned that the cheese balls toppings were just an after-thought, but the dryness of the cheese balls actually match surprisingly well with the creamy cheese.

As briefly mentioned, they have several choices of alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages. I can whole-heartedly recommend the ‘Cannabis Club Sud’ beer imported from Germany which is actually aromatized with hemp and brewed in Bavaria.

So if you find yourself in Kyungridan craving for a burger and a relaxed atmosphere, Yes Burger might be just the place for you!

Info
Business hours: 11AM – 10PM
Address: 서울특별시 용산구 녹사평대로 220 2F
Instructions: Walk straight for a few hundred meters from Noksapyeong station, exit 2 until the underpass. Cross the underpass and backtrack for 1-3 minutes until you see the yellow Yes Burger-sign above you.

Country Man’s – Chicago style pizza in Jonggak station

We all know Seoulites love to ride the latest trends. About a year ago, Chicago deep-dish pizza blew up out of nowhere. Korea remolded it into their own style by filling the crusts to the brimful with cheese, lacing the tomato sauce with loads of garlic and serving the pizza in such fancy contraptions Mr. Gadget would be jealous.

One place that keeps the traditions of the Chicago deep-dish pizza intact, with only some slight modifications to make it unique, is Country Man’s in Jongro. Situated on the 2nd floor in a corner overlooking the Cheonggyecheon Stream next to the so called Avenue of Youth, this quaint place not only serves pizzas, but pilafs, pastas and ades as well.

The latter was by far my favorite. We tried the Red Mango and Orange ade, and the tangy orange flavor was a perfect combination with the rich cheese of the pizza. The ades come in generous servings and can easily be shared by two people.

The restaurant itself is the third location after two restaurants in Busan. The Seoul restaurant opened only a few months ago but is already bustling with people filling their pizza cravings. Customers can choose from two different sizes of the pizza and several toppings can be added. The crust is filled with cheese and a sweet/salty mix of powdered sugar and cheese powder is sprinkled on top, which gives it a unique flair.

The pasta we tried was served in a pesto-based sauce that went perfectly with the al dente pasta. Although I thought the orange-ade was the star of the show, my colleagues crowned the pilaff the king of the evening. With lots of succulent pieces of beef on top, whole cloves of grilled garlic, topped with a white, cream-based sauce, I can understand where they are coming from. You even have to customize the pilaf yourself since the menu asks you to choose two ingredients out of chicken breast/pineapple/garlic/beef/pork/kimchi/shrimp/bacon and then the chef will make a special pilaf based on the chosen ingredients.

So, whenever you feel hungry after sightseeing near Gyeongbokgung, Bosingak, Insadong or Jogyesa, I recommend you to recharge your batteries at Country Man’s.

Info
Business hours: 11AM – 11PM (Break 4-5PM)
Address: 서울특별시 종로구 청계천로 73

(You have to take the elevator to the 2nd floor, so it can be a bit tricky to find)
Price: Approx. 15,000W/person

Rak'n Wok - Yangjae station

In Seoul, for every 5-10 Korean restaurants there seems to be a Chinese restaurant as well. Much like Chinese restaurants all over the world, even in Korea they have been adapted to local tastes. Rak'n Wok takes this transformation one step further and adds a Western twist to the Chinese/Korean cuisine. On the menu you will recognize things from a purely Chinese menu, American-Chinese food and finally Korean-Chinese dishes. Honestly, all of this is all fine and dandy as long as the taste - the main attribute under the microscope of my visit - is delicious.

And taste is something Rak'n Wok has in bundles. But before we got to dismember the different dishes and their flavors, we were greeted by a marvelous couple who soon turned out to be the owner of the restaurant. They told us that being a franchise restaurant, their options to diverge from the path decided by the headquarters are limited in some areas. Still, they have worked hard to find the best distributors of ingredients to put this particular restaurant on the food-lovers’ map.

The restaurant, located in the office-filled Yangjae area, has been open to customers just short of a whole year. The local neighborhood is still pretty traditional for being south of the Hangang with seollongtang and jjigae-places spread here and there. The owner, Mrs. Yuseon, together with her husband wanted to modernize the area a little bit and predict that it will develop into somewhere like Garosugil and become hipper and popular by the year.

The choice of restaurant fell on Chinese fusion after the couple had spent years on the road on business trips on other work. The foreign food on the business trips were always delicious at a start, but after a few days they would long for Asian food and then Chinese food always proved versatile with flavors to satiate any type of food palette.

 

Our roller-coaster through the landscape of tastes of China started off with a Crab Meat Basket appetizer to transition to Sweet-and-Sour Pork, Garlic Fried Chicken and Beef & Broccoli. The sitting was concluded with XO Crab Meat fried rice and Black Bean noodles. The Crab Meat Basket is apparently one of the most popular dishes on the menu. A large serving of crab meat and egg, cradled into a deep-fried shell, you start wishing this was the main dish and not just an appetizer. Not only are the vegetables evidently fresh, the crab tastes strong enough to become the king of this dish and not trumped by the egg.

 

For the Sweet-and-Sour Pork it soon becomes apparent that the ingredients were not just poured all together into the sauce. Tasting the pineapple, you can feel that it has been grilled slightly before diving into the sauce. This careful preparation of every single ingredient separates Rak'n Wok’s Sweet-and-Sour Pork from other establishments. Next up, the Garlic Fried Chicken adds a piquant flavor to the meal and the garlic never becomes overwhelming, as so often happens in Korea.

  

The Beef & Broccoli stands well on its own, but together with the flower-shaped bread, it really elevates to another level. The beef is succulent and the broccoli has retained its crispiness and not been overcooked. Dipping the bread in the sauce would have been the perfect finale of the meal. But let us not forget the XO Crab Meat fried rice and Black Bean noodles! The Black Bean noodles are a tad sweeter than other restaurants to set Rak'n Wok apart. And just like the appetizer, Rak'n Wok seems to do everything right when it comes to crab!

  

All in all, Rak'n Wok does most things right. Delicious food, minimalist interior that does not scream China like some other tacky restaurants in Seoul. Be sure to check it out at:

Address: 서울특별시 서초구 서운로6길 22 (Yangjae stn. Line 3, Exit 1)

Phone: 02-3473-3336

Opening hours:

     Weekdays: 11:30 – 15:00 and 17:30 – 22:00 (Break time: 15:00 – 17:30)

     Weekends: 11:30 – 22:00

Best dish: Crab Meat Salad and Sweet-and-Sour Pork

Figure Museum W

Hoarding and collecting. The line is thin in the world of figurines, and it is a difficult task to put the boss of Figure Museum W into one or the other category. Safe to say, he has spent a fortune on figures, which provides to give an unforgettable experience at the museum. Before entering, I am sure few people would imagine that some of the figures are more expensive than Louis Vuitton bags and have more diamonds than Swarovski jewelry. Actually, tucked away on the top floor and easy to miss if you don’t have an eye for shiny and sparkling things, is a miniature car ornamented to the brim with real jewels provided by Swarovski. Just a few meters next to it is a Batman car that was used in the old Batman movies by Tim Burton, bought off the movie producer himself. And in the corner of the same floor is a Bruce Lee-figure with real human hair. If you enter on a humid day, the hair is rumored to go all frizzy.

              

Figure Museum W consists of dozens of these hidden gems that are easy to miss if you do not ask for a guided tour. Luckily Figure Museum W caters to an international crowd with not only Korean, Chinese, Japanese and English, but also Spanish starting about two days before our visit. So even though the official website is currently only in English, most of the staff actually speak English. If you want a personal and informational guide, ask for Mr. Tori Bee who will sprinkle some of his personal opinions on top of the information about the prices, limited availability, production country and story of the particular figures.

      

The museum consists of six floors, each with a different theme. On the top you have cars, Bruce Lee, Gundam and Evangelion figures. Just below there are Avengers, Marvel and DC. One floor is dedicated purely to Japanese animes, comics and games. My personal genre is Street Fighter, so I enjoyed seeing a bust of Akuma/Gouki and an illustration of how Sagat got the scar on his chest from Ryu’s shoryuken, accompanied by the guide’s “Hadouken!” sound effect. As is standard, the museum also has a shop with prices ranging from about 10,000 – 300,000W. I like the fact that they’ve also managed to fit a cafe and board game area into the museum. On top of that, there are some old arcade machines sporting a tweaked up version of Street Fighter 2, Virtua Fighter 2 and some shooters.

           

Open hours: Every day 11AM – 7PM. Closed on January 1st, Lunar New Year’s Day and Chuseok.
Admission: Adults 15,000 W / Youth 13,500 W / Children 12,000 W
Address: 3, Seolleung-ro 158-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
Close to Apgujeong Rodeo Stn. Exit 4
Homepage: www.figuremuseumw.co.kr (Korean)