[In the kitchen]A singles haven, In the Kitchen sputters
Oriental duck salad and cold black noodles with sesame sauce. By Cho Jae-eun
It is extremely difficult to find a restaurant where you can sit by yourself and order a plate of pasta without the usual armor of a friend or a book. In a city full of hot, fashionable couples, my sole companion during recent weekends proved to be cold pasta take-out which I can indulge in guilt-free at home.
So with the comforting thought of a salad fork in one hand and a TV remote in the other, I headed to In the Kitchen, a deli at the food corner of Shinsegae department store during another eventless Friday night.
The deli, specializing in salad, cold pasta, sandwiches and other take-out menus, is a haven for singles in Seoul who can’t cook, or have no desire to.
When it first opened, it caused quite a stir as a popular take-out counter, complete with cooks from the Chosun Hotel deli, but unfortunately it has not improved with time as the menus have become quite generic.
Adrift in a crowd of faceless shoppers, I reached my destination and ordered an Oriental duck salad, a Thai noodle salad and cold sesame pasta to go (all costing between 5,000 to 8,000 won per serving). The duck salad, with cabbage, onions, bite-size duck slices, and a soy-based sauce, was a bit too salty, complete with sad strands of wilted vegetables. The duck could have been chicken for all I knew, as the flavor of the meat was lost in the overpowering soy sauce it sat on.
Overpowering proved to be the operative word for my take-out menus from In the Kitchen.
Sesame, which on its own already has quite a strong, overpowering presence, turned overbearing with the thick cream it was mixed with.
There were some seafood elements in the dish, bits of squid and shrimp, but all I could taste was the sesame and cream.
The Thai noodle salad was like Tabasco sauce gone wild, again, with the sauce failing to complement any of the ingredients.
Maybe it would have been smarter to cook pasta at home. Nevertheless, what’s the point in living in this ever-changing city without giving it the benefit of the doubt?
Even with its disappointments, I still remember In the Kitchen’s cold Thai salad from three years ago and how good it was.
And I remember having memorable first dates, eating pasta cooked perfectly al dente at crowded restaurants. Maybe I’m a reckless optimist ― but a girl has got to hope, right?
By Cho Jae-eun Staff Writer [jainnie@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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