Quick Tip: While we're on the subject of Korean delicacies, how about sweet potato pizza? Apparently it is a pretty standard variation in Korea; I've had it both as grocery store deli take-out and at a popular pizza chain, Mr. Pizza Factory, in the form of the classic "Potato Gold" pizza, pictured above.
Mr. Pizza Factory (not to be confused with the Mississippi institution) is actually a Korean chain, one of many chains in Korea selling pizza. Apparently it offers good approximations of American pizza, more so than American pizza chains (the irony of pizza's authenticity tested by its American-ness not lost on you, I'm sure), or any local chain I've tried in Thailand. As Jonathan Gold, food critic for LA Weekly notes in his review:
"Yet there is something about the hand-thrown pizzas here that is more than a bit off, as if the guy who came up with the recipes hadn't actually bothered to visit Italy or New York — like a Dante verse that's been Google-translated from Italian to Korean to Chinese to English and ends up sounding like something issuing from the mouth of either Borat or Skeletor."You'll want to click the link through to the article just for the awful/amazing pun title in the article . . . jealous I didn't get to use it first. Mr. Pizza Factory is, famously, the pizza chain "made for women," though I can't say I found anything particularly feminine (or feminist) about its LA outpost.
The sweet potato is not, as you might expect, a topping. Rather, sweet potato puree forms a mushy sweet filling inside the thick bready crust. Of this, I am a fan. Crispy outside/mushy inside is almost always a good combination. (See, e.g., Spicy Butternut Squash Doughnuts) Less of a fan of the meats of indeterminable origin or the creamy sauce drizzled atop it all, but this is just my personal bias. I can see an average meat-loving person eating it up, literally.
Just in case you are not convinced, you should know Mr. Pizza Factory puts in an ingredient that is rare & hard to find . . . their hearts.
Mr. Pizza Factory is located at 3881 Wilshire Blvd., Koreantown, LA.
3 comments:
hahaha mr. pizza factory's secret ingredient is their hearts. isn't that so a line that i would use? my people are doing me proud. haha.
It also sounds like the tagline to our future book:
"As American as eggrolls, as Asian as apple pie: in this charming tale by two erudite young scholars of the American cultural-culinary scene, their secret ingredient is their hearts."
I've had sweet potato pizza in Korea with sweet potato as a topping and it is FANTASTIC as well. In fact, I found this blog looking for ideas to make my own. I need to know the right combination to make this thing once and for all.
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