Korean Pizza: Love for Women

3/27/08

Mr. Pizza Factory opened in K-Town last year a block from my old apartment at the corner of Wilshire and St. Andrews (two blocks west of Western). My initial impression when I noticed the new pizza joint going up in my old neighborhood was that this place would never make it. There's already plenty of pizza in LA, and some of it is extremely delicious including my favorite pizza of all-time, Z-Pizza (www.zpizza.com), which is located about a mile away on Larchmont. On top of that, the build to put this new pizza place in was a lengthy and elaborate one which, to me, made little sense because I thought this place was destined to fail anyway.

Remember, sense is never static in Koreatown. Things are never more than a moment away from going weird.

Fast forward to January, this year; I spy an article in the LA Weekly by food critic, Jonathan Gold entitled, "I Yam What I Yam: Mr. Pizza Factory." Naturally, I read the article because all things K-town either fascinate or frighten me… or both. The article turned out to be both, but it did pique my curiosity…. here are some excerpts:

The fascinating…"Have you ever seen the Grand Prix pizza at Mr. Pizza Factory, a gleaming new pizzeria in Koreatown? Because even in a culinary crossroads such as Los Angeles, the Grand Prix is a remarkable object. This weighty, doughy construction, swirled like a creamy hypnodisc, so completely warps perceptions of what a pizza might be that it threatens to dent the space-time continuum itself."

The frightening… "Imagine a pie whose geography is neatly bisected, one half bearing mild tomato salsa, cooked shrimp, hamburger, corn kernels, strands of burnt onion, a veneer of orange cheese, and other things that don't really belong on a pizza. On the other rests a payload of bacon, roasted potatoes, squiggles of sour cream, industrial Cheddar, more beef and corn, and what seems like a handful of crushed tortilla chips — like a pizza that dreamed of becoming a plate of nachos but ended up flunking Spanish."

The both…"Yet there is something about the hand-thrown pizzas here that is more than a bit off, as if the guy who came up with the recipes hadn't actually bothered to visit Italy or New York — like a Dante verse that's been Google-translated from Italian to Korean to Chinese to English and ends up sounding like something issuing from the mouth of either Borat or Skeletor."

Borat talking to Skeletor? I'm in.

As if urged on by fate, that weekend my friend, Jill, calls and says she is craving pizza and would I like to meet for lunch? "Why yes I would!" I reply. "I know just the place." So, I take her over to Mr. Pizza Factory and prepare for things to get strange. I guess now would be a good time to tell you that Jill is one of THE PICKIEST FOOD ORDERERS of all-time. She makes Meg Ryan's ordering in "When Harry Met Sally" look like facile beginner fare.

The décor at Mr Pizza Factory is strange. That is not to say that is not nice. It's just strange in that uniquely K-town way of mixing styles that really don't go together. In this case, you have Roman inspired pillars and sconces accented by Korean ultra modern furniture and a goofy mural of the city of LA all in the ground floor of an art deco office building. It wouldn't be until about twenty minutes later that I'd discover the decor matches the pizza.

Anyway, we're seated, menus arrive and I can tell right away that Jill is having hard time. I know her taste well enough to know that what she is really looking for is some sort of veggie pizza, or maybe something w/ chicken on it. Those things are present at Mr. Pizza Factory, but the vegetable choices are not what you'd expect from a pizza place.

"Could we get the Secret Garden pizza, but without the yams or pumpkin mousse and have it well done?" She asks.

"What would the point of that be?" I reply. "No."

She goes back to the menu for a couple more minutes. I see her brow furrow and un-furrow as she goes deeper and deeper in thought trying to formulate a plan for just what she is going to tell the waitress (whose command of the English language is doubtful at best) when she arrives to take our order. I'm foreseeing something burnt and sauce-less being put down in front of my friend.

To my surprise, Jill finally puts down her menu and says, "Y'know, the choices here for pizza are so far out there, that I have absolutely no confidence that what I try to tell them to do to my food will make it any better or worse than what I'm already seeing on the menu."

"Well, just what are you trying to say?"

"What I'm saying is, how do I ask them to leave corn or yams off a pizza when I never would have considered putting it on there in the first place? What I'm saying is, just let the Koreans pick. Order off the menu. The only thing I ask that there be NO RAISINS on my pizza."

"Jill, do you know what you're saying? In all the time I've known you (10+ years), I've never seen you order anything (and I mean anything) straight off the menu."

"Well, you can keep waiting. I'm not going to. You're going to do the ordering."

No raisins on your pizza. You'd think that wouldn't be a problem. At Mr. Pizza Factory, that is not always the case. So, I settle on what appears to be the biggest, baddest pizza on the menu, The Grand Prix (that's the one described in the article above that is like a pizza that dreamed of becoming nachos). I order one big enough for two and I make absolutely no changes to the order. Our topping policy for the meal is set: just let the Koreans pick.

The pizza arrives and it is everything described above and more. Shrimp. Corn. Potato. Mystery drizzle. Crumpled tortilla chips. We both curse ourselves for not having a camera with us to take a picture of this thing before digging in… at first apprehensively, then whole-heartedly. This pizza is good. I mean, it is oh my gawd good. I'm pleasantly surprised. Jill is straight up shocked at how good it is.

Now my friend is chewing and laughing, "I never knew ordering off the menu could be like this!"

Did I mention the edge crust is a scone and it has its own strawberry dipping sauce? It really is... and that's tasty too. Just letting the Koreans pick turned out to be an excellent call.

Jill and I ate the whole damn thing. We even squabbled a little over who'd get the last piece. It was that good. The Grand Prix is not the only thing on the menu that would be considered strange by Western (Westside?) standards of just what a pizza should be. It may not even be the strangest one on the menu… it is certainly not the only one on the menu with a baked good for an edge crust. It doesn't have any yam puree.

Here, see for yourself… http://www.mrpizza.co.kr/GLOBAL/eng/products/mrpizza.php

My favorite piece of information on the website, aside from the pics and descriptions of their signature pizzas (I may be visiting Seafood Island next time I go) is Mr. Pizza Factory's motto, "Love for Women." I also learned that the crust of the pizza I ordered had RAISINS baked into it. Neither of us noticed at the time, but Jill almost cried when I told her the news. She really does not like raisins and is having a hard time reconciling her new found love for Korean pizza with her (irrational) fear of raisins.

Yeah. Love for women. That's what I think when I think pizza (certainly Mr. Pizza!!!). Right?! Things are never more than a moment away from going weird in K-town.