Delight of having localized dishes

 

Lately, we went to a kind of fusion Italian restaurant ‘Mafia Salon’ nearby the Sinjungdong Lotte department store. In this restaurant, not only common Italian dishes, but also, they serve many Korean style side dishes that are good match to soju and beer. This place is one of Leo’s favorites because, there, he loves crab meat cream-based pasta. Yes…recently we ate many noodles and pastas and they are also my preference too. My first impression is that this place seems to be a beer hall, but unlike others, customers are not 9 to 5 works, but families and lovers. I usually have different types of cocktails and highballs rather than beers here.

Usually, Leo hated any types of seasoning and sources, but when it comes to pastas and Chinese noodles like Jajangmyeon (black bean source noodle), he is OK. The crab meat pasta served in Mafia Salon came with crab meat, sliced vegetables, pieces of galic bread, mussels with cream source, which was originally a bit spicy for Leo. Therefore, we made a special request to a chef to make it less spicy and he did wonderful job to make his masterpiece suited for Leo. I really appreciated his flexibility to reflect our need and at the same time, he was able to avoid significant change of the original recipe.

I remember that once with my friends, we had heated debate on the origin of pasta and the difference between noodle and pasta. Well…the difference is obvious and we may just ask one of the generative AIs, then probably they answer correctly. But the history of pasta or noodle seems to be unsettled and nobody is sure of their origin. I heard that Marco Polo who was the one of the greatest explorers introduced pasta from China to Italian peninsular. However, I doubt this theory does not have firm evidences. Some argue that pasta was spread to Sicily by Arabs. Other than what I mentioned so far, there are still many theories about the origin of pasta, including the theory that Hephaestus invented pasta-making equipment in Greek mythology and the theory that it was made by the Etruscans, an ancient country in central and western Italy, around the 5th century BC. Although it is hard to say which one of the theories are correct, it is certain that both noodles and pastas are widest spread foods in the world.

While Leo enjoyed his pasta dish, I did my business as usual. I ordered a glass of bulldog gin, which is a variety of London dry gin. Bulldog gin is made with many plants. Gin drives its unique flavor from juniper berries and the flavor of London dry gin is exclusively obtained during re distillation with many plant materials. When I was a college student, sometimes I drunk London dry gin (I think it was a Korean product) with strong scent of alcohol left in the mouth and honestly, I wasn’t impressed about taste of gin. In this time, I enjoyed bulldog gin’s mild to blander than average liquors taste. The presence of alcohol was not obvious on the palate. According to website, this English gin was made using 12 botanicals including white poppy, dragon eyes, and even lotus leaves.

 

Both of us were much delighted by many localized dishes and after having a glass of gin, I got back to my conventional choice of Jose Cuervo.