11.213 Seafood Spaghetti

11.213

5 (Wed) August 2020

Seafood Spaghetti

3.0

at Chef Mardin

-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-

with IZ

Try Every Italianish Eatery in Wirye (TEIEW)

Chef Mardin is an Italian restaurant.

Great location, right on the corner of the second floor.

A very unlikely restaurant for the neighborhood, in fact the only establishment within a 1.5-km radius that isn’t Korean/Chinese/Japanese.   I was overwhelmed with curiosity, if only by the audacity of it.  No expectations that the food would be any good.

The food was decent, at least the pastas.  The seafood spaghetti, for example, came in a nicely seasoned tomato sauce with what seemed to be a touch of char (from the kitchen, I thought that I’d heard the sound of a wok being tossed over high heat, as if the chef was trained in Chinese technique) and loaded with fresh shrimp, squid, octopus, clams, and mussels (like a jjambbong).  The spaghetti carbonara was similarly competent, if otherwise unremarkable.  I don’t know if we’ll ever return, but I wouldn’t mind if we did.

In the spaghetti, we were surprised to uncover a penne, a fusilli, and a farfalle, which I thought were leftover pieces from a prior batch of some other dish, but the manager explained that the chef deliberately adds them for fun – indeed, the spaghetti carbonara revealed the same surprise guests.
Pizza Margherita (1.5): alas, the thin, hand-rolled crust was quite proper, but it was absurdly overloaded with subpar cheese.

(See all GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See all RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)

Leave a Reply