Italian restaurant Peninsula
Lotte Hotel, 1 Songong-dong | Jung-gu, Seoul 100-070
South Korea

Spacious restaurant

Nice distance between the tables

I ate in the Peninsula “Italian Trattoria” restaurant at the Lotte Hotel shortly after arriving there. Why Italian in Korea?  No particular reason – except that just after a +15 hour journey, it looked more simple and relaxing than any of the (many) other restaurants in this large hotel.  In keeping with my desire for something simple, I took a pizza.

Mega CC beer

The meal started with a basket of freshly baked bread.  This came with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping.  The bread was excellent – wonderfully fresh, crispy outside and moist in the middle. I could have just eaten that and would have been happy   With it, we both took a local beer called Mega CC which was very cold and refreshing.  Our starters were a salad (nice and fresh) and a creamy pumpkin soup – which my colleague reported to be excellent.

Calzone pizza

Whilst my colleague chose pasta, I decided on a simple calzone pizza – with four kinds of cheese.  It came in one piece, but the waiter cut it in slices in front of me (not needed, as I would never eat pizza with my fingers in a restaurant).  Sadly this restaurant didn’t have chilli oil, though the pizza came already drizzled with olive oil.  Overall, it wasn’t at all bad.  I figured I was probably taking a bit of a risk with pizza this far away from Italy, and it wasn’t exactly the light and crispy pizza base I most like. But at the same time, it was far from the thick, stodgy bread base that ruins many a good pizza.  So overall, I left quite happy.

Cost & conclusion:  The bill for two starters, one pizza, one pasta dish and two beers came to 246,000 Korean won (about £120).  That is certainly far from cheap, and without any doubt I could have got better and cheaper by going outside.  It’s hard to talk about value for money in a hotel restaurant though, and there is a price to be paid for convenience.