Quiet date-course restaurant in Seocho: Bistro Chai Plus

A Bangbae-dong Western restaurant made up of private rooms

It was my first time in Seorae Village, and I completely fell for it because there were so many restaurants and cafés with such good vibes,,,, ^-^*

The first floor is a wine shop, and Bistro Chai Plus is on the second floor.

There is a mechanical parking garage in the building, with parking support available. Of all the mechanical parking garages I've used, this one was the simplest and easiest, so it was super convenient!

You enter through the first-floor wine shop, then take the stairs to the restaurant on the second floor. Corkage is normally ₩40,000 per bottle, but if you buy wine from this wine shop, it is ₩10,000 per bottle.

This is the atmosphere inside, and the restaurant is made up of private rooms.

This was the room assigned to us. We came as two, and it felt so cozy and nice to eat in a room like this.

Lunch and dinner courses, plus what we ordered

There are three lunch courses: ₩48,000, ₩58,000, and ₩78,000. The difference is the main: grilled sablefish, lamb rack, or Korean beef steak. The ₩78,000 course also adds sea urchin roe to the perilla-oil buckwheat noodles.

There are also three dinner courses: ₩90,000, ₩120,000, and ₩150,000. These are divided by grilled sablefish, lamb rack, and Korean beef steak too, but the rest of the course composition differs as well.

You can actually order à la carte too, but we ordered one ₩48,000 grilled sablefish lunch course and one ₩58,000 lamb-rack lunch course. You can mix and match!

Such cute water glasses.

The first four dishes of the lunch course

The first dish was a salad of house-made ricotta, fresh apple, and cinnamon dressing.

I expected it to taste healthy, but it was a much more intensely flavored salad than I expected. The tangy balsamic aroma was strong, and the crisp apple with that powerful cinnamon scent was so distinctive. It even tasted a little like churros. A salad flavor I'd never had before~

The second dish is the chef's recommended seasonal soup. On the day I visited, it was cauliflower soup!

The gentle sweetness of boiled cauliflower, rich velvety cream, olive aroma from the olive oil, and bacon chips worked together so beautifully. I really enjoyed this soup. It had a Brussels-sprouts-like flavor!

The third dish was black-sesame gangjeong—fried chicken thigh with a special sauce and black sesame!

The chicken thigh was tender rather than dry, and the black sesame coating was nutty. With the bright sauce and pickled onion, this was also sooo good ㅠㅠ It was like a refreshing sweet-and-spicy fried chicken. I devoured it in no time.

The fourth dish was perilla-oil buckwheat makguksu (cold buckwheat noodles) with whole perilla seeds, baby greens, and cucumber.

Isn't it so pretty,,,? Such a perfect visual attack that it felt almost too pretty to eat. Unlike its looks, which suggest it might pursue natural, mild flavors, this one was intensely flavored too. So delicious.

I mixed it all up and tried it, and the nutty perilla-oil aroma and chewy whole perilla seeds completely filled my mouth. It was light but packed with savory depth—gone in seconds. Give me more!

Grilled sablefish and French rack lamb as the mains

The fifth dishes were the mains: grilled sablefish and lamb-rack steak.

This was grilled sablefish marinated in three kinds of doenjang (fermented soybean paste). It came with capers, peas, and marinated pickled cherry tomatoes. You squeeze a lightly charred lemon over it. The fish was so unbelievably tender that you could eat it without teeth. I loved the subtle doenjang aroma, and it was almost absurdly soft..

This lamb-rack steak came with mint jelly and fresh wasabi. Butter arrived sizzling on a hot stone, and I could tell it was Isigny butter from the smell alone! My favorite butter,, anyway, the aroma was killer.

The cut was French rack. It is a fatty cut, so the juices burst out when you bite into it. You can cook it as much as you like on the hot stone. Isigny butter plus French rack—an insane combination,, The characteristic lamb flavor was so pleasantly pronounced. The meat was tender, not tough.

Finishing with peach and red-bean ice cream

The sixth and final dish was dessert. Every menu is based on seasonal ingredients, and since it was summer, we got red-bean ice cream topped with peach.

Vanilla ice cream topped with moderately sweet, softly cooked red-bean paste, chewy injeolmi (rice cake), and one slice of crisp peach! I finished it feeling nicely refreshed.

Why it was great for quiet dates and gatherings

It was a pretty course-meal restaurant, neat and polished, that would be lovely for a date! Nothing felt heavy, and I think I especially loved the overall bright, refreshing flavors. They say they do not use any artificial seasonings at all, yet they seem to bring out the ingredients' natural umami beautifully for bold flavor.

Since every room is private, I think it would also be great for a gathering, a pre-wedding invitation gathering, a family meeting, an anniversary, a company dinner, or a celebration. It was so nice to relax and have a conversation somewhere quiet.