Petra, high on Seoul's World Heritage list

Yesterday, I suddenly craved for kebab. Badly. But not a vulgar sandwich at the corner, no. At Petra's.

Seoul's Petra is located in Itaewon Governorate: Yaser Ghanayem carved his monument at the Northeastern corner of Itaewon and Noksapyeong streets, at the top of one of those blind concrete walls that tend to cut whole neighborhoods from the streets.

But here, you're not in the middle of the desert: over the past decades, the alley has been carpeted with restaurants and pubs, prolonging Itaewon's United Nation Food Festival. Here, Petra is just one block away from Berlin, with Australia in the middle.

And here, you're not alone: as usual, the place is full, and the patrons obviously enjoying themselves. Yesterday's cocktail? 40% Korean, 30% Middle Eastern, 30% Rest Of The World. Only one table smoking shisha, to complete the atmosphere without fogging it. I'm not even paying much attention to the panoramic view on Yongsan by night: too busy preparing tasty bites of pure bliss.

Our strategy is simple: step one, clean the table, step two, roll back home on our full bellies. The ingredients: kebab mix, pita, and tabouleh. To taste something we hadn't tried before, we also ordered sultan chicken. Not to die for, but an interesting curry flavor, and like all Jordanian food, clearly distinct from the neighbors'.

We spent the evening tearing pieces of bread, spreading layers of (first) soft yoghurt sauce, (second) fresh, hot pepper sauce, and (third) onions, building nests of delicious tabouleh for innocent lambs and chickens, and wolfing down this wrapped material for the UNESCO World Heritage list.

Mission: accomplished. No crumb left behind. Both sauces totally evaporated.

And needless to say, I keep rollin'.

Petra (restaurant)
Itaewon-dong 552, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, ROK
Tel +82.2.790.4433

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