Cycle 15 – Item 7
12 (Fri) January 2024
Tori Curry Rice
1.0
at Sokoa
-Changgok, Sujeong, Seongnam, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea-
w IZ
Sokoa is a Japanese restaurant. Offers curry and tonkatsu. Part of a franchise chain, currently a zillion locations.
Our plan was to eat elsewhere (stay tuned), but they’d run out of ingredients, so we gave Sokoa a shot.
Although I’m getting better at spotting franchise chains (#1 gripe these days) – one typical giveaway is the homogenized uniformity of the set-up, including signage font and placement, interior design and hardware, and menu layout and options – this place seemed so amateur on all fronts that I assumed instead that it was run by inexperienced non-restaurateurs (#2 gripe these days). Now that I think about it, that’s exactly the vibe that they were trying to achieve – a cute hole in the wall, serving humble home-style foods, prepared by untrained but well-meaning/hard-working cooks – so I fell for it.
Either way, the food was crap. The curry was so sweet, and weirdly spicy, that I ate the bits of chicken while trying to rub off as much of the sauce that I could. IZ left a piece of tonkatsu on the plate – a move unprecedented in the history of his life. As we were leaving, he said, “We’re never coming back, right?”
(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)
(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)