Festivus Gastrnomicus Korea Correspondent Ryan Long gives his first report from Korea. Ryan is there doing research on a fullbright grant and I asked him to share his new adventures with Korean food with us.

Daegu, South Korea

Pizza Bingo
(Pi-ja-bing-ko)

http://www.pizzabingo.co.kr/ [not a link because it crashed FireFox for me]

A new nationwide franchise in ROK, Pizza Bingo, has come along in the last year, riding the wave of an idea that the people here will forgo the convenience of delivery if pizza is offered for half the price at a pick-up only shop. It must be understood that many different types of meals are commonly delivered to the home here at the same rate as a pick-up and that tips are basically unheard of in the nation, i.e., there is usually no reason to leave the house for a pizza. This is likely the explanation for their knocking a whopping 6,000 won off the average price.

The name Pizza Bingo would likely not be a catchy name in an “English-language nation,” especially when the pizza shop has nothing at all to do with the game. Dominos Pizza is not Pizza Dominos, mind you. We must strive to carry a cultural relativist perspective, however: when the average Lee, Kim, or Park knows only about 74 English words and both pizza and bingo are among them, it is a catchy business title. (Would an American visit a Korean restaurant called Kalbi Yuck even when it does translate to Rib Station?) An abundance of pastels in the logo does not hurt either. The bottom line, however, is the price.

Is it a coincidence, though, that there exists an older franchise by the same name in France? Who is to say? In South Korea, however, if a business is found to do well, there are logo rip offs and at least six major competing copycat businesses within three months.

I quite unexpectedly found the value in this case to be quite worth the walk (which for me happens to be about only two blocks anyway). I find this to be true, despite the standard practices of using low grade mozzarella cheese and the miserly application of pizza sauce in Korea, for two reasons: 1. Sometimes I just don’t want to eat yet another meal that is made to complement rice and kimchi. 2. Being that Pizza Hut and Dominos on any continent are not much better, and are rich enough as it is, a native franchise deserves a try.

I decided to go with the go-gu-ma (a domestic sweet potato) pizza. Pizza Bingo makes only one size, for better or worse. To reduce bias in sampling, I have decided to adopt the standard of going without the cheese crust when comparing pizzas here (besides it saved me the 1,000 won).

When I arrived at the shop, I found the cashier to be quite friendly; he didn’t yelp when he saw I was not Korean, did not over-compliment me on my ability to speak Korean, nor did he correct me on my intentional mispronunciation of the word pija as pizza; he was quite professional. The place was spick-and-span, however overly colorful it may have been.

The box and ribbon packaging gave me the feeling I was bringing home a present for my wife; that is, since I ignored the number of environmental pollutants required in its creation and destiny (that wonderful part of this present was for my grandchildren, I suppose). The toppings they choose to put on their goguma pizza are as follows: Sweet potato, honest ham cubes, corn a la can, bell pepper, plenty of onion, beef, cheap mozzarella, a miniscule layer of sauce… and it was all topped off with a giant asterisk of conventional Korean-style honeymustard sauce. Of course the side of sweet pickles was included. (How could it not be?!)

I have had pizzas in Daegu that were made of lower quality ingredients for twice the price. The size turned out to be plenty big enough for two or maybe even three. Next time I go with the goguma, I will make a special request that they leave off the corn, but the honeymustard was an interesting compensation for the standard under-saucing and deserves a second try without the corn corruption. Though I’d like to try a couple other pick-up shops first, I will definitely make the four-block round trip again, and may even make this my primary pizza shop here in the Siji section of the Suseong neighborhood of the outer east corner zone of the metropolitan area of Daegu City, Republic of Korea. Overall, this pizza was quite tasty and the morning after could have been much worse.

• Festivus Gastronomicus Rating: Delecticus

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 12:08 am and is filed under Reviews, Korea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.