Tag Archives: Itaewon

Little India Seoul

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Shalla and his restaurant

You like Indian food? You’ll love this place! Any party goers to Hongdae on a Friday and Saturday night will definetely recognize the first and lovable kebab stand guy. His name? Shalla. The friendliest lovable guy who works long hours and never seems to be angry (must be the kebabs – which are made with love!)

A little less known fact about him, he owns an Indian restaurant just off Itaewon Street near the Seoul Masjid (directions below). If  Halal Muslim Indian food is your thing, look no further! Not only are his kebabs astounding when you stumble out of the club at 5am, but his restaurant is even better.

Explorations went ahead and visited him at his restaurant, and then several more times later! We pretty much order the same dish, mainly because it’s A LOT of food for a modest price. The one set we usually order comes with 2 different curries, loaded with naan bread, rice, samosa and tandoori chicken.


Usually the tandoori chicken in other places are overcooked and dry. Here, it’s juicy and succulent. Forget knives and forks! The “finger licking good” definetly lives up to its name! The naan bread is hot, chewy, and loaded with a good amount of garlic, for those garlic lovers. The curries come out in a small candle lit, self heating apparatus. A nice little gimmick.

Even Ian, a huge eater, can’t finish these portions, and Shalla is more than happy to wrap it up and send it home with you on a very happy full stomach. You can order chai teas and lassi’s among the usualy drinks, which are equally astounding.

We’ve tried a few Indian restaurants in Seoul, and this byfar trumps them all. Not only does he personally greet you with a warm welcome and make you feel right at home, his food is just incredibly flavourful and out of this world! Next time your looking for places to eat in Seoul, remember this Indian restaurant! Yumaste!

Here are some pictures of his place.

P.S – Don’t confuse this place with Little India in Insa-dong by Tripadvisor. This is an entirely different place!

Get there:
Call ahead 02- 793-5416. 
From Itaewon Station, (line 6) Exit 3. Go straight to the first big road. You will pass UN Club and Mr. Kebab (You want Shalla’s place) At the intersection, make a right. Go straight. You will pass “Foreign Restaurant” and the “Foreign Food Mart”. Continue to the 3rd small road and make a left toward the mosque. It’s along this road on the left handside. Check map below. 



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Western China dim sum

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Dim Sum!

Considering Korea is so close to China, you’d expect it to have some amazing Chinese food. This is entirely not the case.

Since Ian arrived, he’s been scouring the corners of Seoul to find a decent Chinese restaurant that serves dim sum. The most recent expedition brought Explorations to a place called Western China restaurant. It prided itself with dim sum and that’s what sold us to try it out, finally.

We ordered a chicken dish that seemed Asiatic in flavour, a noodle dish, and four dim sum dishes.We should also note, this was dim sum a-la-carte; and we don’t mean the usual push around carts that defined Ian’s childhood of dim sum meal times.You had to order it from the menu.

We’ll skip the other dishes as dim sum was the heart of the course for tonight. The dim sum dishes we had were Har Gaow, Siu Mao, Siu Long Bao, and Law Mai Fahn. Hovering at around 5,000 Korean won a piece or approximately 4.50(USD). Your usual dishes came with 3 pieces. Usually it’s 4 pieces an order elsewhere.
First, Har Gaow. This dish is one of the staple dim sum foods. You can tell the skill of the chef, and subsequently the quality of the restaurant by this dish. It was incredibly underwhelming. You could barely taste the shrimp, let alone the other spices that’s supposed to go with it.

Next, Siu Mai. Also one of the staple dim sum foods. Sure, there was pork and a little garnish of roe on top, but the shrimp was missing and most other spices that go into making this piece. Things are looking very grave for the next few dishes.

Along came Siu Long Bao. Ian’s first time trying this dim sum piece was, actually, in Korea. It was on par with the other dim sum retaurants he’s tried. but, we’re not entirely sure how good this is. This one is a dumpling with soup inside the dumpling. There’s promise that it could go well, but not here.

Last but not least was the Law Mai Fahn. This dish comes pre-wrapped in lotus leaf as it’s steamed in it. Inside the lotus leaf is sticky rice and in the middle of it, a concoction of chicken blend of spices. This was the closest tasting dish to what dim sum actually is. But having said that, it was still lacking in most flavours that define what this dish is. The sticky rice also wasn’t very sticky.

All in all at the end of the meal, we were full. The flavours of dim sum were less than impressive and even more so, a bill to rub salt in the wound really doesn’t justify the cost vs. taste ratio. First and last time we’ll ever go there.

The quest for dim sum continues…

We have Pictures of the other dishes. If you so chose to go to this restaurant, it’s in Itaewon in Hannam-Dong. The website and phone number is in the pictures, however we don’t reccommend destroying your hope of dim sum by going here. Good for Korean-ized Chinese food.