Korea (and many neighboring Asian countries) love pizza but have no reason to stay true to traditional recipes. Few fight to preserve the authenticity of pizza in Korea, so local chefs take the logical step of improving pizza to fit the local taste.
The result? Bizarre, complicated, full-loaded pizzas. For example, this one seems to have a think crust, a layer of cheese (no sauce underneath), potato wedges, shrimp, olives, bacon, ranch, corn, and although we can’t see it I’m going to assume there’s mayonnaise in there. Corn and mayo are Korean pizza mainstays, for some reason.
The menu below shoes pizzas with fried shimp on the crust, lobster, mocha crust stuffed with cream cheese (on a steak pizza), egg tart crust, and ribs with pumpkin. You can even find desert pizzas that use a cookie crust and chocolate or fruit sauces instead of tomato sauce, which sounds quite delicious to me. Essentially, Korean pizza knows no limits.
Curious? Mr. Pizza has an English language website filled with rather unappetizing-looking items. In my experience though, as long as you pick toppings that you are somewhat used to, Mr. Pizza can be fabulously delicious. I’m not comfortable having mocha-cream cheese-steak, but that Eggta pizza had brie and chambert and steak and it was so explosively delicious. I haven’t been to Pizza Hut of Dominoes in Korea, but it seems the menus are similarly strange.
As I’ve stated in the rules of this blog, found in the footer, modern Korean food is less about refinement and more about loud, bold tastes. That’s what I love about day-to-day eating while traveling in Seoul, and I suggest you embrace it!
Mr. Pizza is a large chain, so finding it shouldn’t be hard despite the store locator on their English site redirecting to the wrong page. If you can brave Korean, here’s the official store locator. Otherwise, Google Maps is your friend.
Bonus: This video of the Korean “Pizza Dance” from a Pizza Hut commercial a few years back.
Seoulful Food 