Tuesday, June 03, 2014

campus burger

There's a cafe on campus called Windy City; I've been there once or twice before, and I went back again today. This time, the purpose was to try the burger set (Koreans use "set" instead of "value meal" to describe prix-fixe menus). It turned out to be modestly sized, which was no big surprise, but the burger itself had that soft, homemade feel about it. The real revelation, though, was the dipping sauce that accompanied the French fries: from a distance, the sauce looked like ketchup, but it turned out to be sweet-and-spicy chili sauce. I could have used more of that, along with about three times as many fries.

Click on the image below to enlarge:


It wasn't a bad burger, overall; I might go back and order it again. I liked the vegetables, and the egg atop the burger patty was cute (see it hiding in there?). I could have done without the weird sauces on the burger; ketchup and mayo would have been fine. I had also tried to order a chicken salad, but the guy at the counter told me, "No salad," so that's a strike against Windy City—not enough to make me forsake the place, but enough to make me cautious. This is the second time that the restaurant has run out of something. Not a good sign.

Righto—I'll be teaching my final Korean class this evening. Just two more hours to go until class. I'm sad that I won't be seeing this group any longer, but at the same time, I wouldn't be human if I didn't admit to a feeling of relief about having my evenings free again for the first time in months (my students doubtless feel the same way!). The semester is drawing to a close; I'm no longer teaching classes, per se; I'm now engaging in review and prepping my students for their last two big exams: a school-sanctioned listening test and the six classes' respective final exams. After that, it's just a matter of finalizing grades.

As the gyopos like to say: Laters.


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8 comments:

Charles said...

Ugh. That looks like one of those burgers that are impossible to actually fit in your mouth (assuming you have a normal human mouth).

Build 'em wide--I'm all for that. But why do burgers have to be piled up so high that the only feasible way to eat them is to deconstruct them?

Kevin Kim said...

Yeah, I thought about removing the egg to make the burger a bit shorter, but then I shrugged and just attempted the burger as it was. Sure enough, eating it was awkward. But it was pretty tasty... once I removed that goddamn onion hiding at the bottom.

The patty was curious: it was a bit too soft and mushy, like a homemade burger that's been very tentatively cooked, and/or that's been a bit oversauced during the patty-making phase. Too much liquid in the ground beef will produce a gooey burger, and this patty barely held its shape. It wasn't undercooked; it was just strangely put together.

John said...

Ah, an egg-a-burger. They sell a nice one on the mean streets of Itaewon. Jee Yeun makes them at home now occasionally too. It's the egg that makes sandwich!

Charles said...

I imagine removing the onion would make it easier to eat as well--the prime culprit in "tower burgers" is those single slices of thick cut vegetables that they stack one atop the other. In this particular burger, the onion and tomato alone are quite hefty in girth.

But what's between the actually patty and the egg? It looks like cheese and sauce, but there's so much space there that there's got to be something solid hiding underneath the goo.

Kevin Kim said...

I think you're right, Charles: it's just cheese and sauces. Something else hiding in there...? Gollum, maybe?

Charles said...

The horrors that might have been lurking in the depths of the goo. It makes me shudder just to think about it.

John from Daejeon said...

How many of these would you be willing to try?

Kevin Kim said...

John from Daejeon,

I'd avoid #7, which looks horrifying, but I'd try #6 and #10.