Baby-friendly Italian restaurant near Gwangneung Arboretum, Pocheon

It was such a gorgeous day. Great sunshine, pretty sky, the kind of weather that makes every photo look good. So we headed to a Gwangneung Arboretum favorite — From Italy!

A medieval-feeling interior, and an outdoor garden

This was actually my first time at From Italy, and the moment I walked in I was a little surprised by how much fancier it felt than I expected.

The overall interior was quite different from a typical Italian restaurant. It felt almost like stepping into medieval times?

The antique-styled interior was quite striking. The lighting, furniture and props all worked together so well that even though we came to eat, we ended up sightseeing too, haha.

But what I loved most was the outdoor garden! Maybe because the weather was so good, the garden looked even prettier. Visiting with our baby, we couldn't just walk past a space this pretty, haha. Snap snap 📸 With the weather so nice, every photo came out great, so we ended up taking photos for a good while.

So many pasta options, we each picked one

Finally, it was time to order. From Italy had a really wide range of pastas, and since we wanted to try something out of the ordinary, my husband and I each picked something different.

We ordered gebawi pasta and yaki oil pasta! The names alone sounded intriguing, haha. First, the pre-meal bread!

Bread aged 14 hours

A few slices of pre-meal bread came out, and we were told it's aged 14 hours every day before baking. I expected just an ordinary starter bread, but it was genuinely delicious. Dipped in balsamic and olive oil, it had a nutty flavor that got better the more you chewed.

Gebawi pasta — a cream pasta with crushed gonggalppang

And then the gebawi pasta we'd been waiting for arrived! The look of it alone was pretty unique. There was gonggalppang (hollow puffed bread) on top, topped with fried crab. It looked unusual in photos, but seeing it in person made it even more surprising.

Gebawi pasta turned out to be a cream pasta, and the cream sauce paired better with the noodles than I expected. The fun part of this dish is the gonggalppang! I thought it was just decoration, but once I crushed it and mixed it into the pasta, the crunchy texture added a whole new dimension. The soft cream pasta with that crispy, crunchy bite made me keep reaching back for more. It looked completely different from a typical cream pasta, too — great for a day when you want something special.

Yaki oil pasta — packed with mussels, tastes like yakisoba

The second dish was the yaki oil pasta! I'd never had this style of pasta before, but one bite in, it clicked. It tasted a bit like yakisoba! It's technically an oil pasta, but quite different from the oil pastas we usually think of.

And it was absolutely loaded with mussels — as generous as a bowl of jjamppong (spicy seafood noodle soup). It wasn't just noodles with a few mussels thrown in; there were so many that picking them out one by one was part of the fun. It had a nutty, savory depth that I personally enjoyed a lot too.

I was glad my husband and I each ordered something different. Since the two dishes were such different styles, we got to enjoy both flavors!

I also heard that From Italy is run by a chef who used to work at a 5-star hotel, which probably explains why both the food and the space felt so upscale overall.

Is it okay to visit with a baby?

The interior is upscale, the menu is far from ordinary, and even the food's presentation feels thoughtful. But it's not so formal that it's off-limits — with the well-kept outdoor garden, it was actually fine to visit with our baby, just like we did.

And the thing that matters most when dining out with a baby — a baby chair was ready for us. They also gave us separate baby dishware, which made eating together so much easier. These days, when you eat out with a baby, it's not just about the taste — how comfortably you and the baby can eat together really matters, and this place delivered on that front too.

Especially on a nice day, you can take plenty of photos in the outdoor garden, which makes it a solid spot for a family outing.

Delicious pasta, lots of baby photos in a pretty space, and perfect weather to top it off. If you're looking for a great restaurant near Gwangneung Arboretum on a sunny day, I definitely recommend taking some photos in the outdoor garden too! That's the end of my happy visit to From Italy's Gomo-ri location, where I enjoyed a great meal with my baby and took tons of pretty photos 💛