A TALE OF THREE PIZZAS
#1: WOULD YOU LIKE SWEET POTATOES WITH THAT?
A good way to get a taste (pun intended) of another culture is to order pizza made in that culture. For example, many expats have gone to Ukraine and come home with stories about pizzas topped with mayonnaise and/or corn. In Korea I found a surprise ingredient on a piece of pizza served at a Toastmasters event I went to at the invitation of a colleague last Saturday.
Before I mention the pizza, I have to say as an aside that the event was held in a small ballroom in the Tower Palace, a multistory multi-building luxury apartment living complex that was designed by Samsung engineers. It is like the Trump Tower of apartments in Seoul. Its design reminded me of the complex of apartments where my aunt and uncle used to live when they were in New Jersey. There was no New York City skyline, but the sea of red apartment buildings and trees reminded me of the East Coast. My colleague Jasmine agreed, saying there are many parts of Seoul that remind her of her native New Jersey. Many Koreans, she added, settle in New Jersey when they move to America, perhaps for this very reason.
Okay, so the words “luxury living” and “New Jersey” may seem as compatible as chalk and cheese (to borrow a phrase from my British friends), but in Seoul they go together and so there I was feeling elegant and at home when I spied a new food arrival--thin crust pizza. I took a bite and thought to myself, I must be going crazy—this pizza has a slight potato taste. Maybe there’s something wrong with or strange about the crust. Then I saw a suspicious-looking topping and asked a Korean what it was. “Sweet potato” was the reply. All I can say is this: there’s a reason why “yam” and “yum” are two different words in English.
#2: JUST CUP IT
One day I was at Samsung Plaza, the local shopping mall area. There’s an outdoor pedestrian area with shops, and a local hip-hop group was performing there. There were several vendors selling food in the concert area. I saw one dish that smelled and looked good—it was small pizzas (about the size of my hand) that were being sold for 2,000 won (less than 2 U.S. dollars). The company was called “Pizza Port”, though I’m not sure if it was a Western chain or an Asian one. Anyway, when I saw them adding hot sauce to the pizza, I was so happy didn’t care.
What did surprise me, though, was when the vendor took the pizza out of the cast iron oven mold, folded it in half, and stuck one end of it into a Dixie cup. A Dixie cup is a small paper cup that holds maybe 50ml of liquid max. It’s usually used by children to rinse out their mouths after brushing their teeth. My ability to read Gesture language is limited, but it appeared he was telling me that the pizza was hot, and by holding the pizza with the cup it would be easier to eat. I accepted this, just as I accepted the fact that the only napkin-like product available was the roll of toilet paper hanging from his cart. This is a typical offering by Korean vendors and in less expensive restaurants. I took a few pieces and went on my merry way.
#3: IF PAPA JOHN PICKED A PECK OF PICKLES FOR HIS PIZZA…
As I said in the “Trash Talk” vignette, even Western chains that are here in Korea have a Korean twist to them. Dominos, Pizza Hut, and Papa John’s all deliver pizza in my neighborhood. I’ve heard horrible things about the Pizza Hut here, and I feel Dominos is bad no matter where you are in the world. I’ve always liked Papa John’s though, so I decided to give them a try one night.
For about $10, I got a pizza that was about half the size I would have gotten in the U.S. for the same price. The amount of toppings and the cooking time seemed different too. That’s the only way I can explain why the Papa John’s pizza here didn’t taste like Papa John’s in the USA. It was still good and it still qualified as pizza, but it didn’t meet the global standardization test, if there is such a thing for pizza chains.
What was surprisingly different but in a cute way was what came with the pizza: a container of sweet pickle slices. I have found over time that when Koreans prepare Western food, they serve it with pickles. They are accustomed to having some kind of pickled vegetable with their meal, and pickles are the only Western food that fits that category. I can’t fault them for it—perhaps it is in our nature map our known experiences onto foreign ones and vice versa.