Mad For Garlic

Garlic for the Seoul

Food

Service

Atmosphere

Garlic.  The smell hits you like a ton of bricks the second you pass through the over-sized wrought iron doors.  Garlic.  Big, fat, cloves of garlic being roasted in oil until their plump bodies almost split at the seams, exposing tender pungent flesh.  Now I realize I may have a bit more of a garlic obsession than most people.  But after eating Korean preschool lunches day after day of rice and more rice, garlic soaked in olive oil served with fluffy warm delicious bread is truly the stairway to heaven.  Or the gateway to addiction, if you happen to be a fiend like yours truly.     

While Mad For Garlic decently serves up the usual Italian classics, people really come here for the garlic.  The atmosphere is bistro chic but still screaming chain to any one with half a retina.  There are dark wood floors, heaps of garlic artistically strung across the muted brick walls.  Wine bottles are in lined up in a sort of mathematically orchestrated abundance.  The tables are always full of impeccably dressed young Seoulites flirting, gossiping and clinking glasses together around the ripple of soft laughter.  It feels like an indulgence and let’s be honest, you couldn’t do this every day and not need a triple bypass.  But it is an indulgence that you and all of humankind deserve.  Trust me.