Spicy Cream Chicken

Place of Purchase: CU Mini Mart, Incheon

Cost: 1800 won ($1.62)

KCal: 340

I'll be honest here, I just got this sandwich because it had a funny and awkward sounding name. 

I just re-started work again after what was a rather lengthy holiday of 7 weeks and picked this up from a market on my way in the morning. 
Vacation was too long for me and terribly boring. Winter vacation at schools here is like summer vacation in America, because here the school year starts in March. 
I got to doing really weird and irrational stuff in my bored desperation like organizing my closet and cleaning the bathroom, even allowing my bored insanity to allow me to file taxes in January. People do crazy stuff when they have cabin fever and cooped up all day.

I remember when I was a young and impressionable young man and things like vacations were something to look forward to. I liked to travel alone to places I'd never been before and stay drunk all the time on local beer and take pictures of stuff. I still would like to do that again, but some things we must surrender as part of the debt we all must pay.

Now that life has subjugated me I just organize closets and go to Ikea with my wife and look at throw cushions and wish I was at work because it provides me a sense of determination and purpose, feelings throw cushions don't provide me.

Back to the sandwich. 

The name really doesn't make is sound appetizing at all, let's just acknowledge that right now, but oh, Nellie, that was a good sandwich, many gooder than almost any other I have had from a mini-mart in my life.

It was a chicken salad with some ham and cheese. The chicken salad was indeed creamy and a little spicy and tasted amazing. It was such a good sandwich, I would like to find the person who conceived of this and compliment them.

There was a little lettuce on it, not too much, just the right amount to give it a little texture.  The spiciness was just right. It was a glorious sandwich and made me happier than a sandwich should. 4.75 stars deduction for the dumb name

Thick Bacon Pocket

Place of Purchase: Gil Hospital, Starbucks, Incheon

Cost: 4900 won ($4.37)

KCal: 284

I'm breaking my own rules nowadays. This is not from a convenience store, but it is a sandwich, and I'm in Korea, so it's a Korean sandwich. 

Last Friday I got a bit of a stomachache, didn't think much of it but the next morning it hurt in a quite serious way and went to the clinic near my house. When the doctor checked it out he got that look on his face you don't want to see on a doctor's face, and then said I needed to go to a real hospital to check it further, because he was concerned it was my appendix. 

Sure enough, upon going to a very large hospital, the clinic doctor was correct and by that evening I was asleep with strangers cutting holes in me and taking this arguably vestigial appendage from my body. It was not how I had envisioned my weekend would go, and certainly not one of my favorite ways to spend a Saturday evening. 

This was my first time getting general surgery of any kind so it was all new to me. It was a teaching hospital so the doctors, probably residents, were very young. My anesthesiologist was only like 30. He was raised in California and said California stuff like "like, dude, and "totally" a lot. I liked him, he seemed very smart despite his informal manner of speaking, which he was most likely doing to make me more comfortable. The last thing I remember before going under the anesthetic was "John, dude, don't worry man, just breathe this stuff and you'll be like asleep in like, two seconds, you'll trip out how fast this stuff is". He was right on that one. 

Anyways, everything went fine in the sense that I feel much better and I'm not dead. Recovery for the first 3 days was tedious, as I was not allowed any food or water during that time. Although I was getting calories from the IV, I still started to obsess over food. My surgery was on Saturday, and wasn't allowed even soft foods or water until Wednesday. I think in Korea they are much more cautious than America. Probably in America an appendectomy is an outpatient procedure given the broken healthcare system. 

Anyways, cut to Thursday, and I'm given permission for lunchtime discharge and for real food as well. There was a Starbucks on the first floor of my hospital, and I scurried right down there as soon as they opened. I was sickened by the thought of more rice at this point. 

I got the "Thick Bacon Pocket", a chocolate pudding, and a cafe mocha with whipped cream. It cost almost $13, but that was of little concern to me. This was absolutely not my first time in a Starbucks, but it was my first time eating there, mostly because it's very expensive for pre-made food.

I opened it up when it got to my table and inside was a thick piece of bacon. That was all. No condiments or anything. Just bread and bacon. 

But then I took a bite and all was forgiven. It was good, really good. It was the best piece of bread with bacon I have ever had in my life. I'm sure 5 days of food deprivation tainted my objectivity on this one, but that was a damn fine thing to eat. The pudding and mocha were equally complimentary to what amounted to an exquisite culinary experience nearly unmatched in my lifetime. I was happy to have this hospital experience coming to an end, and Thick Bacon Pocket pleased me tremendously. Simplicity worked in this case. I'm going to give this one my first 5 stars* (It does deserve an asterisk because I hadn't really eaten in 5 days and I wasn't given to exacting standards.)

A Casino Buffet Breakfast

Place of Purchase: Paradise Casino, Incheon

Cost: Free with a caveat

KCal: Probably a lot

This is not a sandwich at all, but I kind of made a sandwich thing with the stuff on the plate and the bread, so yes, a sandwich then.

There's a casino not far from my house right next to the airport. It's a sprawling hotel complex with a huge casino, a shopping center, a convention center, food courts, all decorated in a highly garish and shiny way. If I was to compare I'd say the Belaggio in Vegas, like going for the total luxury vibe. There are jewelry shops with stuff on display for $20,000 and more, Michelin Star restaurants, and a buffet that is $100 per. 

I understand gambling is illegal in China except Macao, and this place exists just for the rich people in China to get an easy flight to Incheon and just go to the hotel right next to the airport and get their gaming fix on. A dealer told me that some of them will bet more than $5 million per weekend.  

I've had vices in my life, several to be sure, but gambling never quite got its hooks into me. Lost a few bucks here, won a few there, but nothing much. I feel bad when I lose money and think of all the things I could have gotten with it. 

This place, though, seems intent on having me gamble. 
It's a very simple and devious trick, really. All you have to do is wager $1 minimum and you are eligible to get this free food at the casino cafe. I suppose it's the same thing as a tobacco company giving you lunch if you just have a cigarette first. Dangerous game I'm playing perhaps.

Also interesting to note is that gambling is also illegal in Korea, for Koreans. The people at the entrance really check your identification carefully to make sure you are not a Korean citizen. It seems obvious Korea wants the revenue gaming provides but none of the social problems that can accompany that.

Anyways, I digress. The food. It was fine. It was a standard hotel buffet breakfast, without the bells and whistles like a guy making an omelet for you. There were scrambled and boiled eggs, potatoes, two kinds of bacon, (English and American), sausage, Chinese fried pork, baked beans, a bread selection and a yogurt and salad bar. 
It was fine. The bread was double thickness, like Texas-Toast sized. The bacon was quite limp and the sausage wasn't very good. I made a sandwich with scrambled eggs, bacon, and apricot jam. That was very nice.

Every time I go there, I always play automated roulette. That means at the front of the room there's an actual roulette wheel that is robotically controlled, and like 100 terminals you can bet from. I always bet on 0 and 11, a dollar each time for 5 rolls, and there's my $10 in gambling money. I think if my math is correct betting 5 times on two numbers gives me somewhere in the 20% range of winning, which seems about right. When it does hit, it pays $36, and I just cash it in and don't push it any further. On this day, 0 hit on the last spin, so I walked out with a free buffet and $26 more than I had before. It doesn't happen like that often, but feels pretty good when it does. 

A big drawback of this casino is the people who work there. They are without debate underworld figures, menacing looking gangsters, and much larger than an average person. They certainly give a strong, nonverbal message that there will be no nonsense or bamboozling in this establishment. It makes me nervous, and I have a mild and hopefully irrational fear that one day they'll take me out back and beat me up for taking one too many complimentary buffet breakfasts. At least in modern Vegas the shady stuff is kept behind the curtain for the most part. Not here. 

So my breakfast sandwich was good, especially so that in this case I profited $26 to have it. I will give Paradise Casino's complimentary-for-gambers-buffet a decent 3.5 stars