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Sweet potato crust, fig and snail toppings—in a food that is otherwise conservative, Seoul’s pizza manufacturers aren’t afraid to experiment.

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It’s a chilly cold weather early early morning in December, and walking into Jisoo Kim’s restaurant it is difficult to not instantly gravitate towards the hot range into the kitchen that is open. Thirty-one-year-old Kim, the owner that is friendly chef at “Pizza by the piece,” has had a busy morning baking pizzas for a big purchase that came into the time prior to. He’s normally by himself, but his mother Alice has come in to help out today.

Kim, putting on their typical red baseball limit, slides a sliced, rectangular pizza in to a package and Alice adds it to your stack of other people, that are increasingly being held hot by the electric heated mat and two blankets. Christmas time tree lights wink in the part; folded, always check blankets sleep on seat backs; and Korean hiphop team Dynamic Duo plays within the speakers.

It’s noon, so when Kim bins up the last pizza, a group of center college students and Kia workers marches in. Kim looks momentarily panicked—he requires to drop this order off before he is able to begin cooking. He quickly bundles up the containers and hurries out to their vehicle. The Kia workers eye him drive down.

Kim makes a pizza with half of this it covered with his do-it-yourself ranch sauce as well as partner, a tomato sauce.

“i’ve to rush,” Kim says, while looking forward to the lift at Seoul nationwide University of Education, the distribution target, found just about to happen from their eatery in the greater Gangnam region. He smiles. “Most Koreans, they’re maybe not really patient with regards to food.” “Why therefore belated?” he says they’ll ask. Kim claims their customers that are foreign complain about waiting.

Southern Korea features a well-established pizza tradition. But while chefs of old-fashioned Korean meals can be militant within their adherence to conventions—the most useful purveyors of the meal will frequently provide that meal and nothing else—pizza-makers get one other method. In reality, the guideline is apparently: any such thing goes.

Did Marco Polo take pizza from Korea?

Mr. Pizza is well known for the cheeky, playful image, and, last year, it circulated a viral movie that parodies Korean tradition through pizza. The brief mockumentary, titled “The real Origins of Pizza,” investigates whether Marco Polo took pizza from Korea. At one point, the narrator stumbles for an “undeniable” little bit of supporting evidence—a Buddhist statue through the Goryeo dynasty. The statue’s hat that is rectangular he states, could simply be a pizza package. Plus the smaller field above it? “I think this the first purchase one, get one free garlic bread promotions of that time period,” the narrator continues on to state.

The advertisement had been praised as being a clever send-up of Korean nationalism which also poked enjoyable during the odd practice that Koreans often have actually of professing something international as their very own. For example, during 2009, a federal federal federal government human body reported that the most Christmas that is globally-recognizable tree in Korea, but wasn’t being correctly attributed as such. The spoof documentary also arguably alludes to the idea that, as Tudor believes, “there’s not a historic conception of the pizza”—it’s like a blank canvas as a meta-reading.

And seeing pizza as one thing malleable, according Jennifer Flinn, a Seoul-based Korean diet expert whom went a bilingual meals weblog, has in turn nurtured a tradition of experimentation. Koreans have a “less fixed image of just what a pizza is,” Flinn says. Pizza is “just a strange international meals that someone brought over.”

Pickles have been offered with pizza—perhaps because they’re a palette cleanser, because pizza is greasier than many Korean meals, or as it’s an approximation of kimchi.

Additionally it is a bread, she adds, which includes an “indeterminate destination” in Korean tradition, specially among older Koreans whom see it as a treats instead than appropriate meal, which necessitates consuming rice. With it more,” she says“Because it’s a snack you can play around. “If you merely go, ‘Oh, it is a flatbread with frequently cheese onto it,’ you’ll get various places.”

“i’ve a Dream,” a restaurant that is kitsch with bric-a-brac, Barbie dolls, and theater paraphernalia, found above Gangnam’s labyrinthine subway section, houses among the city’s more uncommon pizzas. The very nearly solely feminine clients frequently requests the strawberry pizza, a dish that is ultra-sweet the restaurant is flogging for four years. Strawberries function in the dough, since the sauce so that as the topping. It is baked with mozzarella and served with lashings of cream cheese icing.

The feminine clients will frequently purchase the pizza as a primary to share with you having a pasta dish, claims Yoon Seok, the top cook. Seok believes that the meal is popular in component because, as Korean ladies are understood to simply simply take proper care of the epidermis, they’re probably attracted to the health advantages of this good fresh fruit. With this particular logic, Seok introduced a fig and snail pizza—many Korean brands that are cosmetic skincare items with snail extracts—hoping it would catch in. It’sn’t.

The strawberry pizza is served with pickles.

Whenever asked why the restaurant is popular with ladies, he said that Korean guys, himself included, prefer Korean food. “Women, they take to brand brand brand new things more frequently than guys,” he states. “And even dating, they like dating international dudes.”

Korean pizza-makers and social observers generally concur that ladies drive meals styles in the nation. The area was then a trend incubator, but more than that, the Korean chain is clearly focusing on the women’s market in fact, it’s no surprise that Mr. Pizza first opened near the Ewha campus. Its motto is “Ladies First”—past slogans had been “Love for Women” and “Made for Women”—and its advertising promotions are women-focused. A commercial like “Mr. Pizza does shrimp,” depicts consuming pizza, for the girl carrying it out, as enjoyable and liberating.

Kim states nearly all of their customers are “of course female… In Korea, individuals think pizza, pasta, and spaghetti”—foreign meals, put another way—“that’s the women’s food.”

He’s causes it to be point out steadfastly keep up together with their clientele. On Sundays, their day down, he attempts brand new restaurants with buddies or bikes around the town to have a look at exactly exactly exactly exactly what eateries are crowded, and just exactly just what styles they can discern. That’s exactly exactly how he found that places serving patbingsoo—a red bean and shaved ice dessert—were attracting lots of clients. “ we must utilize it,” he recalls thinking to himself. So he added a brand new pizza to their menu, which includes whipped cream, red beans, melted cheese, and walnut powder. “I’m able to plainly state, in Korea, particularly ladies, they simply love sweet beans that are red” Kim says.