Style: Spanish
Location: Hongdae, Seoul
Price: approx. w80,000 for two incl. wine
Hours: 6pm-2am, Closed Tuesdays 
Contact: 02 6407 6064 some English spoken

Pakito Taberna is one of those places that I am reluctant to review for fear that one of my favorite spots in Hongdae will become everyone else’s favorite spot in Hongdae and make it even harder for me to get a table on the weekends. I’ve been going to Pakito’s nearly every time I come to Seoul for the past year and staying until they start sweeping around my table. It’s the kind of place I would go to way too often if I lived in Seoul, the kind of place that feels like home.


Pakito, the nickname of the chef and owner, worked in restaurants in Valencia for years before he came back to Seoul with his wife, the artist behind the painting on the walls, to open his own restaurant tucked away at the end of an alley. His menu is simple and focuses on tapas and affordable wine. One of the reasons I keep coming back is for the cumin-scented black olives that he imports and piles liberally with every round of drinks. I’d love to post a picture but there was no way keep hands out of the dish the moment it arrived.

His other tapas are simple, focusing on the fresh, seasonal ingredients that drive an ever changing menu; an ethic he says, that is at the heart of Spanish cuisine. Most of his ingredients are local, with staples like olives and spices from local suppliers. His saffron, though, is directly imported from Spain by him. Paella, of course is a staple in his kitchen and he takes great pride is his enormous “paella gigantico” that you can catch a brief glimpse of simmering on the gas before throngs of hungry locals filled the seats to gobble it up.

Most of the business comes from Koreans, says his wife, but on the weekends, when the place is packed you can find quite a few foreigners including a lot of Spanish ex-pats from around the city.

You might also find patrons of the four-legged variety, sipping water from a dish and looking longingly at bits of food dangling from a plate. Pakito and his wife are dog owners and have no problem with dogs in the restaurant as long as they behave as well, if not better than the customers.

One of the other great assets to Pakito’s, besides the food and generous smiles from his wide, smiling mug, is the fact that the tunes come right off a laptop and you can request pretty much any song and they will find it. That is of course when our man himself is not serenading the tables with a bit of canto hermoso.

Pakito Taberna can be found on our Seoul map at the bottom of the list.

Printable directions in Korean and English

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