Mitaly Pasta and Pizza: Korea’s Budget Italian Chain

Craving pasta during a Shinan trip, and somehow ending up at Mitaly

We had driven down from Daejeon for a weekend trip around Shinan in South Jeolla, and after spending the whole day wandering about the islands, we crossed over towards Mokpo on 4 May 2026, the day before Children’s Day in Korea. My wife and I sat in the car for ages trying to decide what to have for lunch, but after eating seafood since the morning, I suddenly fancied pasta. In Korea, if you go out for Western food like pasta or pizza, you normally expect to pay around ₩15,000 to ₩20,000 per person, roughly £8 to £11. But at Mitaly, some pasta dishes start at under ₩7,000, about £4. Mitaly is a Korean pasta franchise with branches across the country, serving a pretty wide Italian-style menu from spaghetti and risotto to pizza. Getting made-to-order pasta and pizza at that price feels almost suspicious. I searched to see whether there was one near Mokpo, found the Yeongam Samho branch, put the address into the car navigation and headed straight there.

Arriving at Mitaly Yeongam Samho, and the slightly worrying first impression

When we arrived, I’ll be honest, I felt a bit unsure. The sign definitely said Mitaly, but the front of the restaurant was so quiet, and apart from one lonely menu board beside the door, there was not much to show whether it was actually open or not. My wife looked at it from the car and said, “Are you sure this place is really open?” She did not look keen to get out, so I went first and walked up to the door.

A restaurant that looked completely different inside

But once I opened the door and stepped in, the place felt completely different from the outside. The building stretches back quite far, so it was roomier than expected, with sky-blue walls, marble tables and neat gold-legged chairs. For a second, it felt more like walking into a café than a budget pasta restaurant. The wall lighting was warm, the whole space was bright and clean, and the atmosphere was honestly far nicer than I expected from somewhere selling pasta for under ₩7,000, or about £4. I already knew Korean restaurants often take their interiors seriously, but I did not expect this much from a place at this price point. There was a family eating with a child on one side, and near the entrance there was a kiosk — a self-ordering machine where you choose your dishes on a touch screen. As soon as my wife came in, she said, “I worried for nothing when I saw it from outside.” To be fair, I was thinking exactly the same thing.

Ordering from a table kiosk, a very Korean restaurant habit

We ordered directly from the kiosk on the table. There was one at each table, so as soon as you sat down, you just tapped through the menu, picked what you wanted, inserted your card and the order and payment were done at the same time. My wife kept swiping through the options because there were so many dishes to choose from. It took a while, but that is part of the fun.

The ordering mistake where I pressed vongole twice

While ordering on the kiosk, I accidentally pressed the vongole pasta twice. I only noticed after paying, but a member of staff came over first and asked, “Did you mean to order two vongole pastas?” She immediately changed one of them to the seafood jjamppong pasta, and I only had to pay the ₩1,000 difference, about 55p. When staff deal with that sort of small mistake without looking annoyed, it genuinely leaves a good impression.

Three bowls of pasta and one pizza, and the food starts arriving

About 10 minutes after ordering, the seafood jjamppong pasta and vongole pasta came out first. The dish on the left was the seafood jjamppong pasta, with a red broth piled with mussels and prawns, while the vongole on the right had clams sitting neatly on top of the spaghetti. The plates were bigger than expected, and both portions looked generous.

In Korea, three pastas and a whole pizza for under ₩50,000

Then the gambas pasta and pepperoni pizza arrived, and suddenly the whole table was full. The gambas pasta came with baguette slices on top, and the pepperoni pizza was large enough that it felt like quite a lot for two people. The fact that all of this came to ₩44,200, about £24, still feels slightly hard to believe. In Korea, ordering three pasta dishes and a whole pizza for under ₩50,000 is not something you come across every day. My wife looked at the table and said, “Where else in Korea would you get all this for this price?” Honestly, I had no answer.

Vongole pasta for ₩9,800 — this many clams at this price?

The vongole pasta was ₩9,800, about £5.30. Vongole is an oil-based pasta with clams, and I did not expect this many clams at this price. The opened shells had plump clam meat inside, and you could see the spaghetti coated in glossy olive oil between them. There was one dried chilli and one shishito-style pepper in the middle, and that dried chilli was not just decoration. My wife bit into it without realising and immediately reached for water, which made me laugh on my own. The pasta itself was a little softer than I would ideally like, but considering the amount of clams for the money, I could easily let that slide. Because it was oil-based, it did not feel heavy, and the clam juices gave it a clean, savoury finish.

Signature gambas pasta, the dish my wife kept praising

The signature gambas pasta was ₩11,800, about £6.40. Gambas is basically prawns cooked in garlic oil, and this dish puts that whole idea on top of pasta. There were roughly four or five prawns, and you could see crisp garlic chips tucked between the strands of spaghetti. It also came with two slices of baguette on one side of the plate, perfect for mopping up the garlic oil left at the bottom. My wife made a big fuss over this one and said it was the best thing we ordered that day. The prawns were springy rather than tough, and the garlic oil had soaked into the pasta properly, so every forkful gave off that warm garlic aroma. I stole one bite and had to admit she was right.

Seafood jjamppong pasta, Korean heat meets Italian-style pasta

When this first arrived, I thought it was a tomato sauce pasta. But after one forkful, it was clearly something else. The seafood jjamppong pasta was ₩10,800, about £5.90. Jjamppong is a spicy Korean seafood noodle dish, and here that peppery, savoury seafood flavour seemed to melt into the tomato-based sauce, making it noticeably different from a normal tomato pasta. There were five or six mussels in their shells, plus half a crab sitting on top, so out of the four dishes on the table, this one had the most dramatic look. There was plenty of broth too, so even after eating the noodles, I kept spooning up the soup. I liked the spicy edge, but my wife preferred the gambas and pushed this one towards me after a couple of forkfuls. Which is how I ended up eating far too much, naturally.

Mitaly pepperoni pizza, the most satisfying dish of the day

The pepperoni pizza was ₩11,800, about £6.40. Personally, I much prefer simple pizzas like this to the thick-crust, heavily topped style that many Korean pizza chains tend to make. Thin dough, cheese and pepperoni — or something along the lines of a margherita — is much more my sort of thing.

So when this pizza came out, I immediately thought it looked like my style, and once I tasted it, it was genuinely better than expected. The crust was thin and crisp, but the cheese layer was thicker than I thought it would be, so when I lifted a slice, the cheese stretched nicely. The pepperoni slices were fairly large too. In this price range, I have tried plenty of chains where the pasta is decent but the pizza feels like an afterthought, but here I actually felt the pizza might be the stronger side of the menu. Out of the four dishes we ordered that day, this was the one I was happiest with. When I told my wife I wanted just one more slice, she gave me a look and said, “You already finished most of the jjamppong pasta by yourself.” Fair point.

Final thoughts on Mitaly, a budget pasta chain that makes sense

If I compare it with a high-end Italian restaurant or a famous place in Italy, of course there were little things that could be better. The pasta was slightly soft in places, and there were moments where I wished the sauces had a bit more depth. But honestly, that is not really what I expect from pasta that costs around ₩10,000 or less. The lack of a dedicated car park was a small downside too, though the nearby roadside parking made it manageable.

In Korea, there is a saying, “cheap things are like bean dregs”, meaning that something cheap is usually poor quality too. But Mitaly did not fit that saying at all. When people talk about cheap pasta in Korea, there are definitely places where the food feels exactly as cheap as the price. Here, though, I felt like I got more than I paid for. Three bowls of pasta and a whole pizza for two people came to ₩44,200, about £24, and we left absolutely full. Considering the cost of eating out in Korea these days, that is more than fair.

The Shinan trip ended with pizza, not the sea

After leaving the restaurant, we drove back towards central Mokpo, and my wife said, “Let’s go to Mitaly again when we’re back in Daejeon.” Since it is a Korean franchise with branches around the country, that is the advantage of this kind of chain restaurant: if you suddenly crave pasta while travelling, you can search for the nearest branch and walk in. On the morning before Children’s Day, I did not expect our Shinan trip to end with pasta, but looking back, the most memorable thing that day was not the sea. It was this pizza.

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