In early August it was so hot that I fled our sweltering apartment and went out. At home, with the progressive electricity rates, it is hard to just switch on the air conditioning. The Cheongna district is nearby, so for the daytime I killed time at the Cheongna Homeplus, where the air conditioning is blasting.

Lotteria’s AZ Burger

It was too hot to leave Homeplus, so I went to the Lotteria inside, and they had the AZ Burger, the “ajae burger” (ajae meaning old guy), so I gave it a try. (Old-guy status: officially certified.) There are so many places making great burgers these days that the taste was not all that impressive, but it is on a different level from your usual franchise burger. A bit more juice and a few more vegetables would have been nice, but it is far better than a Big Mac or a Whopper, so I should be happy that I can now get a burger of this level near home whenever I want.

A walk in Cheongna Lake Park

I left Homeplus around sunset, and maybe because the West Sea is close by, the breeze was nice and cool. It was practically a summer resort. That is what is great about being near the coast.

A ring

Some kind of proposal spot, I guess?

Sunset

The scenery was really beautiful.

Apartment complexes

Apartments are going up all over the place; I do wonder whether they will all sell.

After the walk I needed dinner, and a place caught my eye, so I went in. Not so much because it looked delicious as because there were not many options around. Once more shops move in, there will be more to choose from.

The oven

Blog searches say it is famous for wood-fired pizza, and there really is firewood.

The front

It turned out to be an ordinary place selling pizza, pasta and so on.

Wit My Ex

Wit My Ex means a beer you drink with your ex-girlfriend, which is fun. They were selling a decent beer for the cheap price of 7,000 won, so I could not not order it. A country where you can drink beer of this level anywhere nationwide; I can feel Korea’s gourmet standards developing at breakneck speed. After the AZ Burger, this was my second culture shock of the day. Even if Korea’s culinary base is lacking, importing solves most of it..

Bread before the meal

It was fun that they put garlic in the olive oil, so it tasted kind of like aglio e olio. The bread is baked alongside the pizza, but eating the same thing twice felt a bit redundant.

Salad

Ordinary.

Pizza

Also ordinary..

With prices being cheap and the beer being good, I ate reasonably satisfied. I cannot imagine a world without imported beer anymore.

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