By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
After an abnormally wet and damp March and early April, warmer winds are finally heralding a new season with blooming trees and colorful gardens.
It’s that time of the year when Seoul’s luxury hotels, in part to compensate for a low-demand season in room sales, compete to rollout special culinary promotions to lure food-lovers in a city that lives for its next meal.
Whether its caviar on a pearl spoon, black truffles with foie gras and beef tenderloin, or something less exotic but equally spectacular such as blue-fin tuna sushi, the hotel restaurants are eliminating the borders in cooking to awake your slumbering appetite. That is if you could manage to loosen the purse strings a little.
Imperial Palace Hotel’s Italian restaurant, Verona, will add special dishes of caviar to its menus from May to the end of August.
The restaurant will also add a course menu, priced at 180,000 won for two persons, not including tax and service charge. The menu includes smoked sturgeon and caviar, seafood with shark’s fin and sturgeon soup, deep-fried sturgeon spine and ginseng, linguini pasta with sturgeon ragout, and grilled sturgeon with vongole sauce.
Guests could also enjoy the traditional matching of caviar on ice with blinis, toast, onion, sour cream, egg and chives. Such parings will be priced at 280,000 won for Osetra caviar and 138,000 won for Sevruga caviar.
For more information, call (02) 3440-8135.
Grand InterContinental Seoul’s French restaurant, Table 34, is introducing a special promotion of black truffle dishes through the end of April. The restaurant will bring the truffles, often referred to as ``black gold,’’ directly from France and create a variety of dishes including truffle with mozzarella cheese, tomato, mushroom and pasta, omelet made of truffle, brie cheese, and chive, and truffle with goose liver sauce and beef tenderloin, among other items. The dishes will be priced between 35,000 won to 57,000 won.
For more information, call (02) 559-7631.
The Millennium Seoul Hilton is holding a special promotion of foie gras dishes from its French restaurant, Seasons, through April 25. Jean Caille, a chef from French food company RougiE, will run the kitchen at seasons to create a variety of dishes such as pan-fried foie gras with cabbage and truffle sauce or foie gras with tuna tartar in sesame crust and teriyaki.
The hotel’s Japanese restaurant Genji will also hold a spring promotion from April 26 to May 3, offering a course-menu priced at 124,000 won that features the seasonal best of Japanese gourmet food. The restaurant will also hold a gala dinner on April 26 that will be priced at 160,000 won per person.
For more information, call Seasons at (02) 317-3060 or Genji at (02) 317-3240.
Park Hyatt Seoul’s restaurant and bar, The Timber House, is holding a promotion of blue-fin tuna dishes through May 20. A la carte specialties include sashimi (23,000 won), tuna teriyaki (32,000 won), tuna te maki (15,000 won), tuna tadaki leek (32,000 won), excluding tax and service charge.
The restaurant will also offer two dinner sets priced at 95,000 won and 65,000 won, which offer a variety of appetizer dishes such as tuna salad, grilled tuna and a main dish accompanied by sashimi and sushi.
For more information, call (02) 2016-1234.