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Published: July 24th 2014
A night out in style! We had made a reservation to have dinner at the posh N Grill in Namsan tower. Our reservation was for seven, so we all met around 6:30 in Myeongdong and headed over to the cable car to be whisked up to the base of the tower. Well, disaster struck, we got to the cable car and it was heaving. The queue was huge. We tried to hop into a taxi and get them to take us up, but no taxis can't go all the way up to Namsan Tower. So we had to call the restaurant and tell them our predicament. It must happen quite a lot as they said they would send us a text message, so that we could jump the queue. The text message arrived and we headed into and found the information desk. We showed the lady the text and she said because there were five of us we would have to go up in two separate cable cars. We weren't very happy about it, but what could we do? The restaurant really should have told us that if we wanted to take the cable car up to arrive extra early. We
weren't the only people in this mess, as we spotted two other couples outside, who were ringing the restaurant to get queue jumping texts.
It felt so good to walk past everybody queuing up to buy tickets, we still had to buy tickets for the cable car (it was around 9,000 won for a return journey), but it felt like we were special getting to queue jump and not a regular pleb. We were escorted up a different flight of stair to the people on the queue and we met up with the others, happy that we all got to go up together. There were two other couples there, the couples we had seen earlier outside. We had been told that we weren't allowed to go up all together as we were all ready taking the cable car over its limit. Nice to see post Sewol, nothing has changed with regards to health and safety. We took the cable car up, it was pretty squashed though, with all the other people in it. I couldn't really see any good views not that I was too concerned. I was just hoping that the extra weight wouldn't make the cable snap.
Appetizer of the Day
Tomato, mozzarella, courgette, and aubergine with pestoOnce we got off the cable car, we then had to walk over to the actual tower as the two aren't connected. We went in and told them we had a dinner reservation and we shown to the lift. We got to queue jump here too. We got in the lift first and then all the other people, who were going up to the viewing platform got in. We stopped at their floor first and then we were whisked up to N Grill on the next floor. We were about half an hour late by this point and we were quickly shown to our table. We were given menus, although we had all read the menu online, so we kind all roughly knew what we wanted. I have to say the maitre'd was a bit snooty. He totally didn't understand my accent when I ordered my main, so was like you have to pick an option and I replied that I had. I wasn't the only one on our group that noticed he was a bit snobby. I know we were late, but we were all dressed really nicely, not like the plebs at the next table wearing jeans
Appetizer of the Day
Tomato, mozzarella, courgette, and aubergine with pesto and baseball caps.
Something to note, the restaurant revolves, so during the dinner we did a full rotation and got to see different views of Seoul. It was a bit freaky at times, to realise that we were moving. It made me feel a little queasy, but so long as I didn't think about it, it was okay. Our wine arrived and we had a toast. Our first course quickly arrived, it was the amuse-bouche. Yeah, I had to google that to find out what it was and I have no idea about how to pronounce it, I was terrible at French at school and gave it up as soon as I could. An amuse-bouche is a small course, normally only one or two bites. It's meant to be more intense in flavour and showcase the chef's work, as it is prepared by him or her. It was okay, I can't really remember what it tasted like, so not really amazing or memorable. I'm a pretty slow eater, and I found it a bit annoying that they cleared the plates from others at the table while I was still eating. That's just rude, it's not like they could bring
the next course until we had all finished.
The appetiser of day was served next. That was really nice. It was a tower of aubergine, courgette, tomato and mozzarella, served with a splash of decorative basil pesto. That was delish. I adore all the ingredients that go into this dish (bar the tomatoes, but I don't hate them). I definitely could had eaten that for my main meal, it was lovely. The next course was a kind of pasta course. There were two choices; fresh tagliatelle with mushroom ragu, foie gras and ham or escalope of salmon with a light basil veloute, which was served some kind of large flat pasta. I chose the salmon as I love salmon and I miss eating it here in Korea. At home I would eat salmon at least once a week, but in Korea it is hard to find fish fillets. It's normally whole fishes or the bodies, but still with the bones. The salmon was perfect, melt in your mouth and the sauce was delicious, I love creamy sauces, so I was in my element with this course.
The soup course was served next. The soup was pumpkin and sourdough,
with truffled cream and parmesan. It was only a small portion and served in a kind of shot glass thingy. I wasn't a big fan of the soup, but then I'm not a huge fan of soup unless it's really creamy. I struggled to finish this course, but as the meal was bloody expensive, I was going to make sure I ate every mouthful. We were still revolving round Seoul and the sky was staring to darken a bit. Our main courses arrived, I had spent ages deliberating what I wanted to eat, leading up to coming here. I weighed up the pros and cons of each main dish and even sought some advice from my mam, as to what to get. Luckily, we picked the three dishes that we liked the most, so for our table we ended up with one lamb cutlets, two lobsters in garlic butter, and two of the Korean beef tenderloins. All the meals were delicious. The lamb cutlets were delicious and they were huge. The steak was delicious, too. Those were the two dishes that I had sampled from the others. My lobster was utterly divine. How I wish I was rich an could
live permanently on a diet of seafood! One day, one day... The serving of lobster was huge. It came with new potatoes, which I don't normally like, but these were good. We were also each given a bowl of green salad, which was nice, as it kept the meal light.
Night had well and truly fallen by the time our desserts arrived. Seoul had lit up and was a sea of bright lights below. Night time is when Korea really comes alive. I was a bit gutted that the cheese platter was included in the dessert option. In my opinion, you should have dessert then a cheese board, but that's because I'm greedy and love both sweet and cheese. I had the cheese plate for dessert. It was nice, but a little on the small side. I also tried some of the "Tarte craquante" with Drambuie cream and chocolate orange ganache. That was really nice, and I wish I had had that instead. Some of the others had pink grapefruit panna cotta with grapefruit sorbet and sugared almonds, which they enjoyed. Our coffees arrived and we drank those to finish off our lovely meals, before it was time to
leave. The restaurant gives you a slot for your meal and we had to leave by 8:50.
As we were waiting for the lift we were surrounded by couples. It is definitely the place to go on a date. We were taken down one level to the main observation level. I have been there before. To me, it felt kin of weird to go there after being in a lovely classy restaurant to this busy zoo of tourists below. Needless to say we didn't stay there too long. Instead we headed back to Myeongdong to find a noraebang and have a good sing song.
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