We had lunch at Etaly 잇탈리 in the Heyri Art Village. Etaly is pretty easy to spot since it’s a large restaurant painted in the colors of the Italian flag. There’s plenty of seating, and three floors so it’s easy for large groups. We ordered several different things to share and were given bread and oil as an appetizer. If you are familiar with Italian names for pasta then picking out food will be easy since the names of all the food offered are available on the menu in English. The descriptions however are in Korean.
First we shared a tomato rucola salad with Ricotta cheese. It was good with a sweet fruity dressing and pieces of bread. I ended up making my salad bits into little sandwiches and it was delightful with the cheese. What the menu calls rucola is arugula. This salad was super popular at our table and we demolished it.
Our first pasta to arrive was the pastacino rose pasta which was the most photogenic food ordered.
It looked like a giant hot chocolate or latte. We ended up passing it around and I took pictures of all my coworkers holding it. And then when it was time to try it I learned that it was actually a spicy pasta and quickly regretted taking a bite.
Next we ordered one of the oil pastas, the Vongole Olio Pasta which turned out to be an oily unflavored seafood pasta that my coworkers were not fond of and I didn’t bother to try after seeing their facial expressions and the fact they were picking out the seafood. They even sent it back because it was cold and when it returned it was steaming with more oil and my coworkers were still disappointed.
Next we ended up with two Pane Cream Island Pastas which was by far my favorite.
The pane cream island pasta was a giant piece of bread with the middle cut out and a bacon-y mushroom cream pasta was poured into the center and the middle bits of bread were set on top. It was salty, creamy and savory. I loved it.
We also ended up with two pizzas, a margarita pizza that was on the other end of the table and I didn’t get a good picture of and this Gorgonzola pizza with almonds and honey. Both were good, the Gorgonzola pizza was sweet with a little side cup of honey to dip it in while the margarita pizza was good and basic.
Etaly is open from 10-11:00 with last call at 9:30pm.