Egg & Pork Cutlet

Place of Purchase: GS25, Incheon, Jung-Gu

Cost: 2700 KRW ($2.40)

KCal: 490

This is actually two different half-sandwiches, one with an omelet, and the other with a pork cutlet, so it merits separate reviews.

At a relatively high price-point of 2700 won, I will point out that I have high expectations for this. 2700 won is pretty expensive for a mini-mart sandwich.

t looks very promising. It doesn't appear they went skimpy on the ingredients, the egg part is thick and so is the pork cutlet. The sandwich is obviously inspired by Japanese cuisine, tonkatsu, (pork cutlet) and tamago (folded egg).

I first went to Japan in 2002. When I first arrived in Korea, I had to complete my work visa, but had to do it outside of Korea, so they sent me to Osaka for a day. Fly there in the morning, come back in the evening. I was very excited to see Japan since prior to coming to Korea the week before, I'd never been outside America except for Mexico. From the airport, I took a fancy train to the city, and followed the directions my work had given me to find the Korean consulate. I gave them my application and had to wait four hours. I met a Canadian guy named Pete who was doing the same thing as me. He liked to drink beer too, so we went off and did a lot of that and walked around Osaka. It was fascinating, the cool buildings, pachinko parlors, and even vending machines that sold beer. It was a fun four hours, there's a magic to seeing a place for the first time, and you don't know it was magic until it's over. It came time to get our visas and go back to Korea. We had the same flight so that was nice. From Osaka to Seoul is less than two hours. Pete brought two bottles of sake onto the plane and drank them during the flight. I think it was strong sake, because he was very drunk by the time we got to Korea and lost his passport somewhere between the plane and checkpoint. That was the last time I ever saw Pete, stuck behind Korean immigration, drunk without a passport.

I wonder what he's up to now.

The egg part is good. Very simple, but good. It's just a plain scrambled egg with what I guess to be Kewpie mayo with it. It tastes fine, but I think it could use some texture like pickles or salad. It doesn't offend me, but it does not raise my spirits either. 3 stars

The pork cutlet part is bad. Shockingly bad. Star Wars prequel bad. It's a soggy mess and the sauce is unpleasant in taste. What looked so delicious through the cellophane window is a disaster and a lie. Whoever conceived of this should be ashamed. I don't wish physical harm on them, but I hope they get yelled at for something they didn't do, or get grape jam on their favorite piece of clothing. This is an inexcusable act of villainy. This brings disgrace to the Korean sandwich industry. I'm giving it more than '0' because it did not give me food poisoning .5 stars