Restaurant: My Chi Chi’s “마이 치치스” (Seoul, Korea)
My Chi Chi’s “마이 치치스” • 168-3 Itaewon Dong • Seoul, Korea • 02-749-7753
Category: Continental Pan Asian Mix
Rating: Zero (0)
It saddens me to write this review as I have yet to give ANY restaurant a ZERO rating but in this case, it’s fully deserved. It is by far and away, the worst dining experience I’ve had in recent memory.
My Chi Chi’s is a small restaurant tucked away on a backstreet, lined with nothing but restaurants and bars. It is basically located right behind the main Itaewon Road “이태원로”. The restaurant describes itself as being Asian Fusion but there is nothing Asian Fusion about the place other than a few dishes as described as being Japanese, Chinese, Indian, etc.. and adding either fries or a salad to the dish. This is not my idea of “fusion” but rather “confusion” if you ask me.
We were originally going to try Macaroni Market, Chef Leo Kang’s bistro type restaurant. However, it wasn’t meant to be because they were about to close for their mid-afternoon break between the hours of 3-5pm. We were a bit hungry so after walking around we had noticed My Chi Chi’s which is owned by Tony Hong “홍석천”, a well known Korean actor. I had seen him on a Korean food TV show and had heard he owned several restaurants in Itaewon so I was anxious to try out at least one of his restaurants, because on TV he came off as an owner who was also a genuine foodie.
Although the menu posted outside wasn’t all that interesting, we were hungry and decided to dine since I was curious about the quality of food at this celebrity owned restaurant. Once inside, we were greeted and told to sit anywhere we would like. After looking over the menu, we decided to go with the “Italian Tomato Chicken” and either the “Daily Pasta Special” or the “Pasta Green Alio”. You might be asking yourself what exactly is “Green Alio” and it wasn’t until I read the Korean subtitled description that it was really meant to be “Pasta Green Aglio” which is a green garlic sauce and in this case specifically, a garlic heavy pesto sauce. While we looked around for a server to take our order, we noticed two servers in the corner with their phones out and text messaging. We got their attention and asked the server what today’s pasta special was and we were genuinely surprised to find out that he didn’t know, especially since it was close to 3pm. Had they not sold one pasta special all day? Had they ever heard of a pre-shift meeting between the BOH “back of the house” and FOH “front of the house”? Does the Chef not communicate what the daily special’s are to at the least the Restaurant Manager who would then relay the message to the service staff? After disappearing for a minute he came back to tell us it was a “Shrimp Rosé” with no further description?! Did “rosé” refer to a pink vodka type sauce or a rosé or white zinfandel based sauce? Instead of asking further, we decided to just go with the “Pasta Green A(g)lio”.
About 15 minutes later, the pasta was brought out and in typical, bad service fashion, the question of “who’s getting this” came up. I had expected the chicken to follow shortly but no there was no sign of the chicken or the server. Between 10-15 minutes later, the chicken was brought out and placed on the table with no apology, no excuses, no explanation as if this was the norm. I questioned the server as to how they can serve two main dishes for two diners 10-15 minutes apart from each other? I explained to him that the pasta was now cold since we were waiting for the chicken to arrive. He apologized and asked if we would like to have the pasta re-cooked to which I countered “what about the chicken?” and his response was “I’m sorry”. I told him that we’d just eat the food that was on the table.
Since I have been in the restaurant business as a Chef, General Manager and VP of Operations for the past two decades, I’m well aware that mistakes can be made and often I’m very forgiving of restaurants when either a service or food mishap happens. However, when something goes awry with either service or food, one or the other can save the day as well as addressing the problem directly and immediately. In this case, I would have been very forgiving of the service issue if the food had been at least pretty good or even decent. The final straw was that the food was inedible. The pasta lacked basic salt levels with only a pesto that was drowned out by an overbearing, raw garlic flavored pesto sauce. The french fries served with the the chicken were cold and soggy. The salad’s dressing was overly sour from a dressing with too much vinegar and again with no salt. The chicken was drowned in a nondescript, tomato sauce that lacked any flavor or seasoning but was too acidic with no sugars to balance out the acidity. Lastly, to add insult to injury, the “airline chicken breast” which is a breast with the first wing joint attached, was so overcooked that the bottom of the chicken was literally as tough as leather and slightly burnt and the inside was rubbery dry. In my opinion, this was probably because they had pre-cooked or par-cooked the chicken prior and then overcooked it just to make sure the chicken was dead the second time around. Actually the best part of the meal was the “pizza bread” that came with the chicken which was actually pita bread with baked on mozzarella cheese.
The food was so bad, that after a few bites, we paid the bill and left. 45,000KRW (about $45USD) for an inedible meal with abysmal service. Sad day indeed.
The pasta actually looked pretty decent although the smell of garlic was immediately overpowering. I love garlic and “Aglio E Olio” is one of my favorite kinds of pasta, but this was too much to the point of being offensive.
What was left of the inedible pasta. This is actually a closeup shot so it doesn’t show how much was really left but we had taken literally three bites which was one too many.
Again, a closeup shot of the leftover plate of chicken.
Pretty cool wall decor!
hamatama 