Best Place I Ever Eaten In

The restaurant O’neul is located in Seoul on a street that is full of embassies, decent buildings, and expensive cars. When you first arrive there, you might be a little intimidated by this luxury atmosphere, but when you enter the restaurant, you will become comfortable with their extremely polite attitude and some sort of bamboo fragrance.

After you are escort to your private room, the staff will get your coat and bag, and will serve you the perfect temperature medium-hot towels that you can use to wipe your hands. You can hear the Asian version of classical music, which is unconventional, above the ceiling-attached speaker, and there is a traditional Korean garden with seasonal flowers right next to your room window.

My five course meal consisted of mussel soup, blanched octopus and seaweed wrap, steamed pork belly with herb kimchi, white radish water kimchi noodles, and rice cake waffle with tea. Each dish was incredible, but the thing that really surprised me was each plate and food temperature. Each serving dish and main dish was the right temperature of course, but the rocks underneath the octopus or the traditional chinaware for the water even had its own perfect temperature. I honestly didn’t like the raw-kind of seafood, but their mussel and octopus was just amazing and the steamed pork belly melted in my mouth. I’ve tried “pine leaf tea” for the first time at O’neul and that tea became my favorite.

“Everything is about fineness” said Thomas Keller. Because of the fineness, O’neul is the best place I’ve ever eaten in.

- BloomingJ