italian food

I love Italian food, but in Korea it has always been something that I make at home and never, ever go out to a restaurant for. I'm sure there are good Italian restaurants in Seoul, and maybe a couple other big cities. But from my experience, it's usually expensive and could always be made better at home. And every single time I've gone for Italian food I've been left wishing we had gone somewhere else. At least most of the time, they have been work/social dinners/lunches so I didn't pay for it, but still.

Usually when people are picking someplace to eat, and they're including me as a vegetarian or other vegetarians, they tend to lean towards Italian food. I'm guessing because 1. it's foreign food and I'm a foreigner and 2. some dishes are vegetarian friendly. So yeah, their hearts are generally in the right place, but the food often isn't.

After living in Chungju for 5 months, I just had my first trip to a Korean/Italian restaurant. Oh wait, second, I went to one of those with my school, which was another awkward school event, so I'll just pretend this was the first time...

The restaurant was actually a nice, cozy little place with a great atmosphere. What I really appreciated was the lone canvas:

It didn't have a title, but if I was titling it, I would call it Zebra bum.

It reminded me of one of my favourite episodes of a cartoon I really like called Bob's Burgers. His sister in law visits during art week to display her artwork in his restaurant, and her new series of work is of animals' anuses. Which naturally make everyone want to stop eating there, but he can't say anything because she's family. Fantastic.

They also had some pretty unique, three pronged, fun shaped forks. And a nonsensical motto "tie with pastafe."

I ordered mushroom, tomato spaghetti, to the left is white deokbokki (rice blobs with cheese instead of pepper sauce), at the top shrimp spaghetti and to the right, pickles. It's completely and utterly essential for pickles to be served as a side with Italian food. It was the same Italian food experience I've always had in Korea... but on the bright side, at least without any school function weirdness!

A shot from behind the waterfalls. There's a little Korean gazebo (I have no idea what else to call it) on top of the ridge looking onto the waterfall, which also doubles as a fantastic make out spot for older Koreans as I learned on my trip.

Rice paddies, fields and mountains. This is pretty much all that surrounds Chungju. And it's all looking extra lush thanks to all the rain.

And the futuristic/70s style Sky repair centre. Which I now know exists because I drop my phone on a regular basis. This is why I shouldn't have nice things.