Newspapers for Menus and they have sparling wine in a beer glass

Her Own Main has an interesting concept. It’s a library that has an Italian Cuisine restaurant in it. Hmmmm….now that goes against what I was taught growing up. My librarian would yell whenever I tried to sneak snacks into the book stacks. Anywho, this restaurant is located at Seocho Acrovista’s shopping center, where the old Sampoong Department Store was, and they serve pasta and wine and coffee and beer and… Nothing that blew me away. The menu is a tad expensive, but you’re paying for the atmosphere.

Free Mussels if you order wine

Oh, and if you order a bottle a wine, you get free mussels in tomato sauce. This was the best part of the meal.

I ordered the seafood risotto and it wasn’t risotto. It’s Korean short grain rice in tomato sauce. My friend got the pasta, and this was done quite well (it’s pretty hard to mess up pasta.)

I do have to say that the service wasn’t quite up to snuff. The waiter, a lanky lad, kept waving his hair away from his face like he was a hula girl car ornament and he was a very passive waiter that took minutes to clear away dirty dishes. Obviously, he wasn’t hired for his skill, but for his waify appearance. As soon as we got our wine, our big bowl of mussels came out. These were superb. One minute later came our salad and 1 minute after that we got our pasta.

Classy Atmosphere

The table wasn’t big enough for all the dishes- like, duh. So after the waif of a waiter tried to jigsaw a big plate on a tiny table already covered with big plates, I just told them they need to hold service.

The manager told me that the mussels were free service and the pastas were cooked and they would “not be perfect” if we didn’t eat them right away. I asked him why he didn’t hold the pastas until we at least finished our salads. He didn’t have an answer and then I told him he needed to remake the pastas and he should wait until the table is ready for the food. We argued for a bit and then he conceded and told me he would remake the dish and serve it to us when we were ready.

Well, when we were ready, it was obvious he didn’t remake the dishes. The leafy garnish on top had obviously been sitting under a heat lamp (he could have at least taken it off). I mentioned something to him and he apologized and said that the chef wouldn’t redo the dish- this isn’t commonly done in Korea. He was very kind about it and I just let it go. He offered to take some money off the bill for it, but i told him it wasn’t necessary.

Oh, well it is what it is. The wine menu is the best part and you can get a nice wine with mussels for about 45,000 won. I’d simply go there for that.

Dan

Alsace Gentil Hugel 45,000 won

Mussels again

Korean Rice Risotto

Pasta

Lunch Crowd

Coffee. Cookie