restaurant review again

Quiet Lunch at Park’s
	By Cathy Rose A. Garcia Staff Reporter Finding a quiet place to have a leisurely meal is getting harder and harder these days. Restaurants are usually crowded, noisy, and you always feel rushed when eating your meal. If you don’t mind driving out of Seoul, you can go to Park, a newly opened restaurant in Paltang, Kyonggi Province. The all-white lake house offers much-needed peace and quiet and, more importantly, good food. When you enter the restaurant, you are greeted with a warm yet sophisticated interior. The walls are decorated with abstract art work, and brown couches with bright pink pillows create a relaxing atmosphere. The menu is simple, featuring mainly pasta and steak dishes. But the quality makes up for the lack of variety. Lunch sets are reasonably priced, ranging from 18,000 won for pasta to 45,000 won for the filet mignon. The set includes soup, a roll, the main dish and a dessert. Our meal started off with the soup of the day, in this case, a cream of broccoli soup. The soup is thick with lots of chunky broccoli bits and is served with warm rolls. The Caesar salad is also a good choice to start the meal. For the main course, the olive oil pesto pasta is simple but flavorful. Fettuccini noodles are bathed in a sauce of pesto, olive oil, nuts and chili flakes. The rib-eye steak is juicy and tasty. It seems bigger than steaks you can find elsewhere. It is served with steamed vegetables, corn and whole garlic cloves. You can flavor the steak with either Dijon mustard or steak sauce. The meal would not be complete without dessert. The dessert of the day was a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with candied pecans and swirls of maple and espresso syrup. David Cho, the owner of Park, said he wanted to open a restaurant that served good quality Western-style food, since most of the restaurants in the area only serve Korean food. Park’s menu also includes pork skewers, hamburger steak, meatballs with peaches, shrimp fried rice and fish and chips. There is also a shrimp cream pasta, tomato sauce pasta and spaghetti and meatballs. Cho said the restaurant also serves brunch dishes, such as a banana brioche (13,000 won) and a salsa omelet (15,000 won). After the meal, you can take your cup of coffee, sit outdoors and enjoy the picturesque view of the Han River. Or you can look at the artwork displayed in the Ellen Kim Gallery on the second floor. Although the garden is still a work in progress, Cho said he expects it to be filled with blooming plants and flowers in the spring. He said this would be a perfect place to hold an outdoor wedding during spring or summer. For reservations, call (031) 576-2217. Park is open every day from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. cathy@koreatimes.co.kr 02-01-2007 20:42