Last week, I had an email from a gentleman in Canada, who happened upon my blog. After exchanging several notes, I asked if I could "cut and paste" some of his comments re: his time in Jeonju with his wife and daughter, starting in 1994. He gave his "ok" so here is one of his segments.
FOOD
You mention also that there are a Pizza Hut, an Outback Restaurant, and even a Mickey D's in the city. When we lived there there was only a Wendy's and it was downtown in what you call the "theater district." This district then was composed of only four theaters / screens over about a three block area. On most Saturdays we would take one of our elementary school classes to a burger and a movie. These kids, for the most part, had never had western food and in the Korean tradition all but refused to touch it with their hands. Burgers, chicken pieces, and even french fries were picked up with a napkin and never touched their hands. They did enjoy the food, but thought our yellow mustard was as hot as liquid fire. In the winter months we had dozens and dozens of students into our home for meals and to play with Chynna and I threatened them all with the French's squeeze bottle. It's strange that after eating kimchi three meals a day they would have such an aversion to mustard.
When we needed some food we recognized we had to go to Seoul or the Wendy's downtown. There were no places in the city to get a burger, pizza, or anything else western. Yes, you could go to the Mini Stop and get a veggie patty on a tasteless bun with a cabbage leaf as the vegetable; but, a burger with a slice of tomato, onion, lettuce, mustard and relish was in our kitchen or in Seoul. As to pizza, Koreans ate theirs on thin crusts with corn, cherries, and Chinese peas that were similar in texture to ball bearings. Finally, the Pizza Hut opened on Christmas Eve of 1994 and we were nearly the first in line - I still have the complimentary menu. We didn't eat there though. A large meat lovers, order of bread sticks, salad bar for three, and a pitcher of diet pepsi was over $100.00. I'm sorry, but we all agreed our taste buds could wait a little longer.
Part 2 - Theaters - coming soon
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