"korea" news and stories

I would hate to find a rat in anything I purchased. That seems like the worst kind of surprise ever. Unfortunately, that's what awaited one consumer in Korea upon opening a bag of frozen mixed vegetables.

The person contacted and filed a complaint with the Korean Food and Drug Administration after purchasing the frozen veggies from a Costco there. The Korean unit of the company acted quickly to recall all Willow Wind Organic Mixed Vegetables, which were imported from California. Of course Costco suspended sales of the product, as well.

The thought of a rat in anything that I've bought is not a pleasant one. I know that some things just happen, but I'd like to think that a rodent would be caught before it got into a product. I know we've seen a lot of product recalls lately, so don't you thing that manufacturers would work a little harder to keep foreign objects out of their products? What do you think?

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Alright, this post has been waiting in the wings for a few days because I couldn't decide whether I was proud to identify myself with the country that developed this, or wanted to drop my shaking head into my hands behind my laptop like I did with the pizza cone.

Apparently, the Korean fast food chain that has arrived in the US via New York and New Jersey, BBQ Chicken, has come up with a new way to make fast food even faster for you. The Col Pop is scary convenient, and by "scary convenient," what I really mean is, "scary." The top of the cup holds popcorn chicken, while the bottom of the cup holds your soda, and keeps both at the optimum temperature. Technology-wise, that's kind of neat. Eating-wise, I'm not sure that this is all that convenient.

The guys over at Serious Eats did a test drive of the Col Pop and though I couldn't figure out what the final conclusion was, it seems that it wasn't all that bad. I'd just like to see them try the spaghetti-version of Col-Pop.

Man, the Asian countries have it so good.

First we hear about Dunkin Donuts going to Shanghai and offering things like honeydew flavored doughnuts, then we find out that Costco in Taiwan is pretty much the picture of bulk Asian food awesomeness. (I didn't even know that Costco was anywhere except the United States).

Teczcape documented a trip to Costco in Taiwan, and though the ridiculously long lines at the rotisserie chicken counter and the requirement that all payments are made in cash are nothing to envy, I couldn't help but covet the bulk bags of kimchi (in the picture, lower left bag in the cart). It's Costco, so who knows about the quality of the kimchi, but at least it's not Kirkland brand!

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Some time, maybe last year, maybe it was the year before that, we mentioned a curious way to make and eat pizza -- in a cone. We saw it first in Seoul, South Korea, and then saw that Crispy Cones was opening franchise location in the US.

Since pizza and pasta are never far from each other, it certainly makes sense that we'd see pasta in a cone!

Okay, it doesn't make sense at all, even if the pitch is that the cones makes eating pasta more convenient and portable. Pizza makes sense because the pizza cone is essentially a more formalized version of the way many people eat large slices of thin crust pizza -- folded up. Why on Earth would one put pasta in a waffle cone?!?! Even if it is technically portable, we can't imagine that all of the ingredients, particularly long strands of spaghetti come tumbling out of the cone once you take a bite.

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"Taking the international sweet tooth by storm." Surely such a phrase could only have been penned by the a PR person for an ice-cream chain.

And so it has.

This gem comes from the press release announcing Cold Stone Creamery's expansion into Mexico and Southeast Asia. I'll admit it's a better turn of phrase than "taking the international sweet tooth by cavity." Full disclosure, I've never eaten the Creamery's ice cream, I suppose I should since there's one in a mall near my house.

The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based purveyor of fresh-made ice-cream that's blended to order with mix-ins on, you guessed it, a cold stone, started scooping up international markets back in 2005, when it opened its first overseas store in Tokyo. Since then Coldstone has opened 22 more stores throughout Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan.

Its first Mexican store will open in September. There's been no word yet as to whether the Creamery stores South of the Border will forgo the signature stone slab in favor of a gigantic molcajete y tejolote to mix the ingredients with the ice cream. The company's next international markets will be Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. I don't think it's gonna happen, but I'd love to see the Creamery's Southeast Asian stores use young coconut, jackfruit and some of the brightly colored gelatinous squiggles that are a staple of the region's frozen confections.

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