Mash-id Potato

TGI Friday operates a few stores in South Korea. One used to operate in downtown Daegu. The menu was strictly American and appealed to American tastes. Foreigners patronized the restaurant, but it was a novelty to Koreans, and they rarely went there.

A short aside. There are fifty-two million citizens in South Korea. There are two hundred thousand foreigners. What I am telling you is that foreigners in Korea comprise less than one half of one percent of the customer base.

TGI Friday in downtown Daegu failed, but resurrected itself in a tower near the train station. We discovered this by happy accident when my wife had an interview with a restaurant in the tower. That is how we came to the food floor. Leaving the elevator, we passed TGI Friday on our right.

Bunny finished her interview and made a beeline for TGI Friday. You see, in her mind, I need Western food. She takes me to 'Western' restaurants as often as she can. I put Western in quotes, because Koreans do Western cuisine with a heavy Korean accent.

For example, Korean chefs cook omelets with olive oil, not butter. French chefs use butter. Watch Jacques Pepin cook omelets. Korean chefs know that classic omelets are cooked with butter. Why do they use olive oil?

90% of Koreans are lactose intolerant. Korean chefs know this. That is why they use oil olive, not butter.

Yes, Koreans eat yogurt; yes, Koreans eat cheese; but both yogurt and cheese are the products of bacteria that eat milk. That means the bacteria ate the lactose and excreted lactic acid and carbon dioxide. Evidently Koreans have no problem with lactic acid.

What about ice cream? How do Koreans – with their lactose intolerance – consume ice cream? I don't know. I do know that Korean markets sell small bottles of bulgaris – yogurt-making lactobacilli – to drink. It appears that drinking bulgaris together with milk products protects the intolerant from trouble with digestion of lactose. I do know that Koreans LOVE ice cream, and they will eat all they can get.

One more thing. Koreans have a low tolerance for salt. How low? They eat French fries without salt. All Korean fried-chicken houses cook without salt. Instead they add a packet of salt to the order so the customer can salt the chicken if they choose. Koreans sell pork belly unsalted. Koreans cook beans without salt – and what an abysmal flavorless concoction that is. I once made a 10-inch pizza for a girl with 1/8 t of salt in the dough – and she said it was too salty.

Back to TGI Friday.

We entered and sat down. Bunny ordered chicken. And pasta. She encouraged me to order a steak.

Ordering a steak in a restaurant in Korea is like ordering a Model T. Ford gave its costumers a choice of colors but delivered black. Likewise, in Korea steaks come well-done. You can shout 'Medium rare!' until you're hoarse, but the waiter will bring you well-done.

So I ordered a burger. If it will come to me well-done no matter what, might as well be a burger.

The French fries did not appeal to me, so I ordered the 'Mashed Potato'. Koreans pronounce this 'mash-id po-tay-to'.

The burger came. I found it satisfactory. Some while later our waiter delivered the mash-id potato.

Recall that most Koreans are lactose intolerant. So no butter, no milk in the mash-id potato. All Koreans have low salt tolerance. So no salt. Oh, and Koreans use red pepper powder liberally – that is what gives kimchi its color – but black pepper is foreign and rare.

In short, what I had before me was a mashed potato. Nothing more.

I called the waiter over and asked for salt, black pepper, and lots of butter. With these and effort I got some taste from my mash-id potato. But not much.

When in Korea, do as the Romans do. Eat pasta.