Pizza in Korea

I am leaving Korea today (Sunday), but having been here since Thursday, it took me until Saturday to finally get pizza. After arriving on Thursday, I spent the evening with Chris Deviney, Don Liuzzi and two local Korean musicians, Ed Choi and Brian ?. Ed is the principal percussionist for the Seoul Philharmonic and Brian is a percussionist in the Civic orchestra here in Seoul. We had a wonderful Korean BBQ that they treated us to. I told them about my pizza blog and Ed informed me that the best place he knew of was a place called Sortino's that was owned by an Italian Canadian.

So on Friday afternoon (that being pizza day), I took the subway to Itaewon to Sortino's. Fortunately I remembered the number for the pizza place because I would have never found it on my own. I finally arrived there at 3:45 after a certain amount of confusion. Unfortunately they were closed until 5:30, and I had a concert later that evening so no pizza. HUGE disappointment!!!!So I went hungry to the concert. To my surprise, the presenters brought some food to the hall that we could munch on. They didn't bring pizza, but they did bring some baked ziti and meatballs. A Korean woman made it for us. I was shocked! It was better than most restaurants back in Philly. I'm tough, so coming from me that's a huge complement. Most people would never even think to ever attempt making Korean food, so my hats off to her for making my day.

Well I did make it to Sortino's for lunch on Saturday with Ed and Chris. And here are the results:

Cheese 6/8
Crust 7/8
Excellent, best so far
Sauce 5/8 A little on the pasty side
Presentation 7/8

Overall 6/8
Ed was right, this was truly a good pizza. (Not to mention, the antipasta was also very good.) This was pizza I could eat regularly. It really had the potential to be amazing had the sauce just been a little lighter and sweeter. The size was generous. Those guys only ate half their pizza. I, of course, ate the entire thing, plus the rest of their pizzas later that night.

There was another place across the street that I would have liked to try, but I ran out of time. On to Beijing, Iam really curious to see what I find there.