Gourmet 494: The Best Food Court in Seoul

Every department store in Korea hides a food court in its basement.  Generally the food is passable, just fuel for the next stop on the shopping trip.  My problem with these places is that while there are lots of options, the food's never that good.  It's a restaurant I would never eat at if I weren't trapped within the walls of a giant department store.  So when I heard about Gourmet 494, another food court in a basement, I figured we could pass.  

But it turns out this food court isn't like those other food courts.  Whoever's running the show in Seoul pulled together a bunch of the cities great restaurants, put a gourmet grocery store, and a couple coffee shops and bakeries into the basement of one of Apgujeong's nicest shopping centers and created an amazing place to eat and eat and eat.

Hamburgers, pizza, sushi, apple pie, chocolate, coffee that tastes good, ice cream, and tons and tons of cheese.   Living in Pohang for two years has turned every adventure outside our small city into an eating adventure.  Going to Seoul or Busan, Istanbul or Madrid, I just want to eat non-Korean food.  Gourmet 494 was the perfect stop.  I had pizza, cheesecake, coffee, and an apple pie, and if I'd seen them before we were on the way out, I would have had some of Vato's Kimchi Fries.  I'm planning my next trip to Seoul just thinking about it.  As always, here's 10 pictures and some foolish comments.

The grocery store is pretty well stocked too, lots of chocolates, cheese, and snacks from around the world.

This place might be a chain, but they'll make chocolate mixes for you.  Choose what you want mixed into a bar of milk, dark, or white chocolate, wait thirty minutes, and boom, your own personal chocolate bar.  We went cashews and white chocolate.

Wood-fire oven!  Tasty pizza!

It was good, though still in the Korean style of a very undercooked, and limp, crust.  Delicious though.

A hamburger with a red onion, it's like you're not even in Korea anymore.

Giant wheels of cheese are rare, but here they are.  A kilo of brie!

I don't know what Fell+Cole San Francisco style ice cream is, but it looked delicious.

Yeah, I ate one of these apple pies.  It was pretty good.  If you need a bigger one, you can buy a full-size pie for around 40 bucks.  Yikes.

I don't know why these chocolates have little drawings on them, but notice the one in the bottom left corner.  We passed.

Gourmet 494 is located in the basement of the Galleria Department Store.  Drive up and down the streets around it and you can get luxury anything, including cars and plastic surgery.

If you need to do some insane shopping, this is the place.  And if you need to do some insane eating, this is also the place.  Get a pizza, get a cheeseburger, get some chocolate, and then go buy a $35,000 T.V.