Dining at the top of N Seoul Tower – n.Grill

Fu decided to splurge a little on my birthday and brought me to n.Grill, which is a restaurant located at the top of N Seoul Tower (Namsan Tower).

The coolest thing about this restaurant is that it’s on the highest floor of N Seoul Tower. This means it’s even higher than the observatory! Can you imagine the kind of view diners will have?! ^o^

Contrary to the name, their main menu is not grilled items, but French fine dining. Honestly, I don’t find the menu very “french” though.

Fu called to make reservations at n.Grill before we arrived in Korea, and while he called about 2 weeks before our dinner, only the 9pm slot was left. It took many tries before someone picked up the call, so that was a bit annoying -_- On the upside, the service staff could speak enough English to complete the reservation.

Before I go on, disclaimer first that the pictures are going to be pretty grainy. Blame low light, lousy iphone picture quality and lack of budget for a good camera! D:

We ordered our mains, and they quite promptly served bread and the first item in the course thereafter.

I was looking at the menu to write this post and this is what it said. Honestly I have no idea what Amuse-bouche means. On that day, I just ate up everything without knowing what was what :D

But for those who are clueless (like me), Wiki says that Amuse-bouche is:

A single, bite-sized hors d’œuvre (appetizer), literally translated as “mouth amuser”.

This dish was pretty okay. Not mind-blowing, but passable.

Sorry for the lacklustre name.

The menu said that the second item is either
“Carpaccio of korean beef with smoked herring roe and watercress”
or
“Salad of quail “escabeche with foie gras”.

Seeing as this dish is neither of the above, I now realize we were effectively cheated of beef/foie gras and given some lousy vegetables instead :S

I wouldn’t touch eggplant with a 10-foot pole, but since it’s all atas and made in the kitchen of a chef who earned a michelin star before, I was curious to see what magic could be performed.

… and…

I actually finished the entire dish!

Achievement unlocked: Making an eggplant hater finish an eggplant dish. I could almost hear the level-up music of the chef who prepared this, lol.

Back on track on the menu.

This dish was pretty yummy! I didn’t even mind having this even though I ordered a fish main.

A frothy mushroom… drink. I wouldn’t call it soup, because it’s very thin. I scooped up the froth to eat and the bubbles are very flavorful, although after the bubbles burst, there’s essentially nothing in your mouth but the flavor.

When I drank it, it was bland and quite horrible D: No velvety smooth, rich mushroom flavor. Just thin, tasteless brown stuff.

How is it that the froth (which is really just air), is tastier than the soup, sorry, I mean drink? Talk about a strange experience!

The real shocker though, was my main.

This… is my main.

The ingredients sound fancy enough, but when the waiter set the plate down in front of me, my first thought was “THIS is what fine dining looks like?”

The 小白菜-looking things slapped on top makes this look like some dish from the food court. Thing is, these vegetables are not even in the description! They went through pains to describe the olive oil and balsamic vinegar which are nothing more than drizzles, but failed to mention the green stuff right smack in the middle of the plate?

Taste-wise, it was supremely underwhelming as well. It felt like I was eating from a 菜飯 (economy mixed rice) stall T_T

At least Fu’s main was more palatable.

He liked his main, and the white lump you see at the back are the potatoes and they are heavenly smooth!

Fu saw that I really liked it and told me I can have the last bit. I was saving it till after I finish my main so that I can end on a delicious note, and guess what happened?

While we were eating, he swiped it up with his fork and downed it in a flash.

:O :O :O

When he saw I had a shocked expression, he even had the cheek to ask what was wrong!  He apologized and claimed he forgot, but the damage was done. :A He said it was sitting looking all delicious, so he very naturally just ate it up! Wahhh, took me a while to get over it >_<

This looks like the salad I buy from the supermarket, and thrown into a bowl. Would it kill them to make it look a bit nicer?

For desserts, we had:

This was delicious.

This was pretty bad.

Going by the food alone, it’s definitely not worth the price. The saving grace is the scenery.

The restaurant has an outer revolving floor, and we had a table on it that was by the window. As the floor slowly rotated, we had access to every view that the tower offered, just by sitting at our table!

This restaurant is the same one where Cheon Song Yi waited for Do Min Joo to celebrate their 100-daysary in the K-drama My Love from the Star.

TADAH! Same! Ok, not exactly. They didn’t bother placing a flower on our table T_T Maybe cause we’re not a superstar like she is.

There are also couple couch seats whereby the couple is literally facing the window!

We didn’t know about it until we sat down and saw this, and it was too late to change. Oh well, probably requires the purchase of the couple dinner set or something, which costs almost 50% more.

Speaking of which, this was our bill.

195,000 won in total, about SGD 250.

Would I go back again? Definitely not. While it was quite romantic, with pretty good service and a good view, the food is really disappointing. Overall, the experience cannot justify the price paid.

If I knew what I know now, I would have just paid for the observatory, and after having my fill of the night view, head to another place for delicious, and much cheaper food!