Guest post: finding pizza by the slice
This guest post is brought to you by Joyce Kong at MangoPlate, a free restaurant discovery app available in English and Korean for iOS and Android.
Recently, MangoPlate was asked where to find pizza by the slice in Seoul (ask one yourself on our Facebook page) and the MangoPlate team will answer.
Korea has 4 pizza groupings:
- As purveyors of authenticity, The Kitchen Salvatore Cuomo, Pizza Peel, Brick Oven, and D’Buzza Pizzeria reign Korea’s pizza world from their brick-laid, 500° Fahrenheit hearths.
- Then there’s the brand name, weirdly expensive franchises like Mr. Pizza and Papa John’s that take liberties on the word “pizza” with their sweet potato and bulgogi-dappled creations.
- Next up, there’s this-can’t-be-real-meat, 5,000 won pizza that tastes terrible but comfortingly awesome at the same time. I’m talking about you, Pizza School.
- Finally, there’s pizza-by-the-slice. While the other pizza categories target the fine dining crowd, families with less-than-discerning palates, and poor/desperate/probably drunk people, pizza-by-the-slice is about peddling hefty, cheese-laden triangles to an on-the-go customer base.
For a while, Costco dominated pizza-by-the-slice. If ever I felt homesick, sinking into a generously cheesy pillow of a Costco slice brought me right back to ‘murrica. But, not everyone has a Costco membership and the whole mustard ketchup onion situation is kinda weird. Then Mick Jones’s Pizza started popping up everywhere, marketing themselves as “original New York style pizza.” Mick Jones’s? Let’s discuss that extra “s.” Dead giveaway.
I’m sorry. Let’s do what?
Mick Jones’s is for the Gangnam crowd who’ve been to New York once or twice and can appreciate the nostalgia of folding a slice in half. Their slice meets the requisite bigger-than-your-face breadth, but for their gains horizontally, they seem to have sacrificed themselves vertically. Their slice is almost 2D, and tastes like cardboard. Death by heat lamp.
Why so flat?
Then Monster Pizza opened in Hongdae. Embracing the on-the-go mentality, this tiny hole-in-the-wall produces true pizza heavy weights at 3,500 won a slice. Patrons can be seen devouring their monster slices seated curbside or lumbering around Hongdae. It’s almost New York’s Greenwich Village at 2 a.m. Almost. But not really.
The slice culture has since migrated to Gyeongnidan (hipster Itaewon) with the opening of The Booth, a craft beer and pizza joint. With Monster Pizza mentoring The Booth’s pizza production, whatever gloriously gooey magic happened in Hongdae is now in Gyeongnidan. Hipsters rejoice.
Whether you two-hand your pizza or “fold hold” it, MangoPlate is here to navigate you to pizza prosperity. It’s like having a personal restaurant advisor in your pocket that’s constantly updated with the latest hotspots and hidden gems.
For more information on any of the pizza places mentioned in this post, just search by keyword in our app’s search.
The MangoPlate team set out to create a better restaurant app that’s not just a directory, but a useful tool that makes restaurant discovery easy and delicious. It’s linked with Facebook, so finding where to eat lunch can be as easy as perusing the “Friends’ Feed”, a timeline of the latest eateries visited by friends.
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