Elwood 5566

take-away Korean style – the ‘hay-box’ has been voted one of the most uniquely Korean innovations (courtesy of Anttinen)

Occasionally, I order a delivery of food over the telephone. I’ve become quite adept at ordering a pizza, chicken or po-ssam (보쌈) and provided there are no hitches, usually whatever it is that I have ordered, will arrive. If you know your address and can repeat it in Korean and are able to read a menu, ordering is not too difficult.

McDonald’s delivery service

Delivery is known as ‘pedal,’ (배달) and many businesses that deliver food, which is most of them, have the technology, when you call, to identify your address and all they need do is check it.  A few places, such as McDonald’s have a centralized call center and staff that often speak some English. However, unless you are familiar with a McDonald’s which has significantly cooled resulting in a dry and bland wadge of assembled parts which no longer blend into a satisfactory taste, I wouldn’t bother. Once you have successfully made an initial order from a business, the second time is easier. If they start gabbling on and you lose the gist of everything, just say sorry and hang-up.

typical delivery (배달) menu

This week, I ordered a burger as I fancied some western style, non-well being food. I didn’t want McCrap and ordered from ‘Mr Big’ whose burgers actually contain meat which is meat in both colour and consistency and not a pallid, compressed meat paste patty. I distinctly ordered a regular size which along with a bottle of coke and chips, Mr Big do real chips as opposed those piddly French fries, should have cost a total of 12000 (£6). I should have listened carefully as my order was read back because when it arrived I was confronted with a bill of 30000 Won (£15). I didn’t have sufficient Korean skills to argue and though not planned the mega meat feast I could see dangling from the delivery man’s hand, called like a Siren. I not so reluctantly handed over the money to be given what looked like a large cake in a box, with a cellophane lid. The burger was enormous, measuring about 18cm in diameter. It was definitely ‘king-size’ and would easily have satisfied three people.  When I told one of my students she said her family of four order this size burger to share but I didn’t feel too bad because she’s built like a chopstick. Besides, once I’d thrown away the enormous bun, the size of a hat, I was left with what was possibly a pound of pure Australian beef and there was no mistaking it was quality meat. Unlike pasty-patties, it smelt of meat, it looked and felt like meat and was deliciously juicy. The only time you ever see any juice in a McCrap burger is in the advertisement photos. I occasionally eat McCrap and when warm and burger-science is working at maximun capacity, they are quite tasty and satisfying but isolate the individual components, or eat them when the loss of heat has killed the flavour, and they are crap. I can eat most things cold, but a cold McCrap burger is disgusting. This monster hamburger you could easily eat cold because unlike a McCrap which are only hamburgers by suggestion, this was real.  Along with the accompanying salad it was a wholesome meal.

king-size

© 林東哲 2010 Creative Commons Licence.