Buccella, bakery and cafe

Visited Buccella at its Cheongdam location and enjoyed a delicious sandwich with a friend. The menu is filled with drool-enducing pastas, salads, and sandwiches, however, the usual rule of ordering different meals in an effort to taste as many dishes as possible went straight out the window, apparently the grilled salmon camembert sandwich was calling to both of us that day. The salmon was grilled and covered with a delicious camembert sauce enclosed in a soft airy ciabatta-like bread. While waiting for your meal you can help yourself to even more bread as you enjoy the beautiful interior and relaxed vibe Buccella has to offer.

Here's the phone numbers for all locations:

Not the best picture ever (the sandwich is much bigger than it looks here) but you can see how airy the bread is... yum. Also the menu didn't state it but you get a generous side salad.

Directions:

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Crafty Burger

Crafty Burger's ordering area opens out onto the street. A ladder leads the way upstairs to the seating area. The kitchen (complete with giant rotating burger grill) is crammed into the tiny downstairs ordering area. Note that Crafty is also quite venerable, having been apparently established in 1894.

The burgers cover all the bases: juicy, fairly large, not too complicated when it comes to toppings. On the whole, a fine discovery in the Gwanghwamun area. My only complaint is that the burger patty was not as juicy as some of the better burgers in Seoul.

Here's the burger itself:

And their rotating grill:

Directions: Go out Anguk Station Exit 2 and walk straight. You should eventually see Crafty Burger on the lefthand side of the street. Zoom out on the map below to see its location in relation to Gyeongbokgung Palace and other nearby subway stops:

View Crafty Burger Location in a larger map

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Quo Lai, Chinese in Samcheong-dong

(Directions at bottom of post.)
Quo Lai is fancy Chinese in a small, cozy restaurant with an upscale, trendy-looking atmosphere, but it's not ridiculously expensive. You can get a really good set menu for 30,000 won per person at dinner time, which features 7 dishes. Meg & I both got that (you can only do it in groups of two people, since the dishes are meant to be shared).

The dishes in the 30,000 set are:

1. Chewy seafood in a deep brown gravy-like broth. Very savory.

2. Seafood noodles with a strange, meringue-like sauce. This dish is interesting, and an excellent complement to the richness of the first dish. Meg was suspicious of the meringue-type sauce, but I thought it was delicious. I think it was egg-based, but I could be way off.

3. Deep-fried shrimp with a sauce that's somewhere between honey mustard for sweetness and hollandaise sauce for texture.

4. Crispy pork with hot peppers piled on top. Mmm, crispy pork. Enough said.

5. Beef & green peppers and onions. A lot of peppers and onions, not that much beef, but still tasty.

6. Chinese flour buns. You know the stuff: really thick, chewy perfectly white, buns.

7. Choice of either jjajangmyeon (noodles with the black bean sauce) or seafood kalguksu (noodles in a mildly spicy clear broth with some seafood thrown in). I'm a jjajang fan, so I'd always recommend the jjajang. It may just be fifty pounds of msg, but something about that black bean sauce just sets off all the deliciousness alarms inside my brain.

Overall, a good meal. Increasingly fancier sets are available for increasingly fancier prices. A good choice to really satisfy a Chinese craving, though of course, there are cheaper ways to do that. Summary, the here food here is pricey but top-notch. Also a good place to take a date, assuming that the individual likes Korean-style Chinese food.

Directions:
These directions are lengthy. See the interactive map below to clear up confusion. Go out Anguk Station Exit 1 and walk straight. Eventually you will get to walls of Gyeongbokgung Palace. It is absolutely massive, you'll know it when you see it. (see the map below.) Turn right and head up the street that goes alongside the palace wall. Keep going until you see a restaurant called The Restaurant. (It should be at the third substantial intersection since you started walking alongside the palace.) When you see The Restaurant, turn right and walk up the street. Just keep going and you will get to Quo Lai after a while; it should be on the left side of the street. On the way up this street, you should pass many nice-looking restaurants and art galleries. If you want to take a cab or need to ask any Korean speakers how to get to Quo Lai, the Hangeul is 쿠얼라이.

View Quo Lai in a larger map

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Cook'n Heim, so-called "artsy" burgers in Samcheong-dong

8,000-15,000 for burgers; around 20,000 for pasta entrees.
Directions and map at bottom of post.

Cook'n Heim had potential, but ultimately, I'd say it failed to deliver. It touts itself as an upscale, fashionable, artsy place to get upscale, fashionable, upscale "Italian-style" burgers. I was intrigued to try these fancy pants burgers, so Meg and I ventured out to Samcheong-dong.

Well, the atmosphere is what you'd expect. You feel like you're in an art museum restaurant, some cozy little place for tourists to dine, next to the gift shop:

Is that good or bad? Well, I was actually kind of digging the atmosphere. I mean, hey, as long as the burgers are good, right?

Well, the burgers actually look fairly amazing. Here's the one I got, with focaccia bread and supposedly some gouda on there somewhere. Looks pretty dang good, eh? Well, my friends; alas! The burger patty was some strange half-meat concoction. Nowhere near real-beef. And strangely sweet. The focaccia was okay, though. But all in all, a highly Koreanized burger (and not in a good way.)


Here's Meg's burger: the "pine" burger, replete with a ton of saccharine-sweet pineapple-topping combined with loads of mustard. In my opinion, a bit of a sauce clash. And the burger patty, of course, was basically some low-grade meatloaf.
All in all, Cook'n Heim had great potential and decent atmosphere. But alas, for burger lovers, I would not recommend it.

Directions:
These directions are lengthy. See the interactive map below to clear up confusion. Go out Anguk Station Exit 1 and walk straight. Eventually you will get to walls of Gyeongbokgung Palace. It is absolutely massive, you'll know it when you see it. (see the map below.) Turn right and head up the street that goes alongside the palace wall. Keep going until you see a restaurant called The Restaurant. (It should be at the third substantial intersection since you started walking alongside the palace.) When you see The Restaurant, turn right and walk up the street. Just keep going and you will get to Cook'n Heim after a while; it should be on the righthand side of the street. On the way up this street, you should pass many nice-looking restaurants and art galleries.

View Cook'n Heim Directions in a larger map

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