How Korea is Destroying American Fast Food!!

In this video, I have traveled to the city of Seoul to learn how South Korea is destroying American fast food. Traditionally, Koreans have a deep appreciation for kimchi, instant noodles, and rice cakes in red sauce. But more and more each year, American fast food is creeping into the Korean diet. The only problem is, those American recipes are being changed to suit the local palate, and change isn't always good. Today I'm on a mission to find the most off-the-wall Korean fast food inventions. I want to find out if they're good, or if they're a complete disaster. Let's move. We have arrived at our first location, right behind me, McDonald's. Anytime you're trying to calibrate the severity of fast food damage in a new country, always go to McDonald's to calibrate. McDonald's is like a baseline. If things are normal here, odds are they're going to be normal everywhere. But if things are a mess here at McDonald's, my friend, what hope do these other fast food chains have? Let's go in. Also, I wore this shirt because it looks like a button. Isn't that nice? Before we go inside, I want to show you my first omen that things are not right with this McDonald's. Take a look at this. It's a classic hot dog. What? First of all, since when does McDonald's actually sell hot dogs? This is a brand new phenomenon. Beyond that, does this hot dog bun have sesame seeds on it? This is highly unusual. I'm going to have to test it out for journalistic purposes. Let's go. All right, folks, thank God they have an ordering kiosk, so I don't need to interface with any actual humans. And actually, it's perfect for Korean people, too. They also don't want to talk to other Koreans. Let's get to it. Eat in. As much as I love to eat out, today we're going to eat in. Let's start by looking at the burger. There are a few different unique burgers that you're going to find here. This is the bulgogi burger. Bulgogi is a famous type of beef preparation here in Korea. More on that later. Ooh, this is another one right here. The McChicken mozzarella. As far as I understand, in the USA, Burger King has cheese sticks, but here, apparently, McDonald's does, too. So I'm going to order one of those. Oh, my God. Do they do this in the USA, too? 743 calories? Korea is not going to remain a slim nation for long. The one thing I do not see here is the hot dog. Let's look at some of these other categories, starting with sides. Boom. Found it. And I'm going to definitely be ordering this 376 calorie hot dog. Here's another one that I'm not sure if it's native just to Korea, but they have a Shanghai chicken snack wrap. I'm going to get it. So that's it for sides. The final thing I'm going to be ordering today, it doesn't look crazy, but it's something I've never seen in the USA. The strawberry Oreo McFlurry. I already love the Oreo McFlurry. Why not add strawberry to it? So far, we have five items. Let's head upstairs and try it out. All right, folks. So how it works here is you take a number, you type it in, and then the folks who work here are going to bring the food to me. What's even more wild than that is they have a QR code and a table number. You could just order your food on your phone and someone will still bring it to you. That's amazing. 감사합니다. All right, folks. Everyone is so quiet in here. There's like 40 people in this McDonald's and no one's talking. So I'm going to do my best to project with a 12-inch voice. Do you remember that from kindergarten? Use your 12-inch voices. All right, lady. We're going to start with dessert because dessert is currently melting. This is a McFlurry, but they put it in a plastic cup. Oh, wait. What did I just hit that cup with? A steel spork. It's a fork and a spoon, but it's metal. Do you think anybody in the USA could be trusted to have a metal tool like this and not take it to their house? No. This is what happens when you live in a high-trust society. You get to have actual metal silverware. Take a look at this. They put actual chunks of strawberry inside plus strawberry syrup. It looks delicious. Cheers. Oh, my God. This is the first thing I've eaten today. It is 11 a.m., and that just hit me like a line of you-know-what. Wow. That's good. Cold, thick syrup, crunchy Oreo cookies, and just deadly sweet strawberries. That's unbelievable. From there, we are going to go to the least strange to the most strange. Right here, we have our Shanghai chicken snack wrap. I may have had something similar to this when I was in China. We've got some either ham or bacon, lettuce, and then a white sauce. So what is so Shanghai about this? My guess would be the sauce. No. To be honest, I'm offended by this. An American company is pretending to sell a Chinese product to Korean people. What is going on here? It's a snack wrap. Basically, it's bacon. It's chicken. It's lettuce. It's mayo. Does it taste good? Yes. Is it something very unique? Sadly, no. Our next food right here is something that is non-Chinese and that is undoubtedly Korean. The bulgogi burger. Boom. At first glance, it may appear to be a normal burger. A beef patty, a bunch of lettuce, and then a very thick, black, oh my god, sauce. As somebody who's lived in Korea for eight years, Koreans, they oversauce everything. They put so much sauce in here, you're not going to have to chew it, it'll just slide down your throat. But what is bulgogi? Bulgogi is a classic Korean dish made of thinly sliced beef, usually ribeye or sirloin, that's been marinated in a sweet and savory sauce, then grilled or stir-fried. Honestly, when you look at this, does this actually resemble Korean bulgogi? It doesn't. So I would say the most bulgogi element of this would be the sauce. Mmm. Super sweet, super salty, it is a lot of sauce. Korean folks might not like this, but the closest similar ingredient to a bulgogi sauce would probably be something like teriyaki. The sauce is what makes the burger. It's savory. It's a little smoky, too. Look, in Japan, they have a teriyaki burger, in Korea, the bulgogi burger. Now we are moving on to an American classic that has potentially been destroyed by Korean recipe makers. I'm scared to open it, but let's open it up and see if there's anything classic about it. Here, the first strange part that greets you about this hot dog is the sesame seed bun on top. It's kind of like a Big Mac bun, but it's stretched out all along. Beyond that, random grilled onions, we have some pickles on this side with a little smattering of ketchup and mustard. But here, this bun is nice, it's soft, it's moist, and it's really wrapping that hot dog like it doesn't want to let go. So is this a classic hot dog? No. I would say it is a McHot McDog. The bun is the best part. The dog itself is pretty nice. It tastes porky, juicy. There's a little bit of ketchup and mustard, and then you're getting just a smattering of onions that you can hardly taste them. You know, I want to love it, but it's not blowing my socks off. It just tastes okay. Moving on to our fifth and final food right here, this one I'm excited about. This is a McChicken mozzarella. Ooh, I see a load of sauce. It looks like mayo and ketchup. Oh, it's hard to see beneath all that lettuce, but you can roughly see right here two mozzarella sticks, and beneath that, a fried chicken patty. The no cheese pull is disappointing. Beyond that, the cheese is kind of imperceptible. Whether they had it in there or not, I wouldn't really know the difference. Oh, it's so much sauce. The problem is the sauce here is so loud, and there's so much of it that it's overpowering any kind of a cheese taste. Oh, wait. Yeah, a little bit of cheese flavor. Here's what I think the solution is. Double the mozzarella sticks, halve the sauce. I mean, the sauce should just be a subtle amplification of the burger. We need a little bit of division between the cheese and the sauce. We need like a little demilitarized zone. Yeah, like the cheese could be in the south, and the sauce could do its own thing in the north. They want to be separate anyways, keep it separated. So this is our first destination of the day, but we have a lot more coming up, and we have a lot more fast food destruction to witness. Let's keep moving. All right, folks, we have moved on to our second destination, right behind me, Taco Bell. And I am very excited because I have never reviewed a Taco Bell outside of the USA. Here's the thing. I lived in Korea for eight years. It took until year six of me being here until this country got its first Taco Bell. Before that day, women would literally date military guys so they could go on to the military base and eat Taco Bell there. That, however, was not an option for me. Now, Taco Bell is not only here in Korea, but they have it all over the place in the city of Seoul. The most interesting thing they've done is integrating their menu with the local palette. The Taco Bell menu here in Korea is something like you're never going to find in the USA, and it all revolves around one ingredient, Korea's most cherished side dish, kimchi. Hmm, what is kimchi? It's like spicy sauerkraut. Kimchi is a spicy fermented cabbage, and folks in Korea love it so much that even when they travel, half their suitcase is full of kimchi and the other half is full of instant noodles. There's a Korean guy right there. Do you like kimchi? Yes. Point kind of proven, I guess. So, is it going to be great, or is the kimchi going to lead to the downfall of Taco Bell? Let's find out. Nice. Just like McDonald's, we have our ordering kiosk. First of all, they have a kimchi cheese burrito. I can either take it out or I can take it in, and I plan to take it in, baby. Here's something else I really like. Not only do they have fries, but they have kimchi fries. Let's take that in. Ooh, this right here, the kimchi cheese quesadilla, the perfect combination of cheese and also kimchi. This looks unfamiliar. I've heard of a Choco Taco in the USA, but this is a Choco Dilla. Definitely, we have to give it a shot and find out. Beyond that, a fountain drink, and we are ready to go. All right, folks, let's get into it. I believe we may have peaked early. This is some real cultural anthropology. We're going to start with this. This is vastly different from anything you'll find in the USA for a couple of reasons. I know what you're thinking. Well, in the USA, we just have loaded fries, not loaded kimchi fries. No, Taco Bell in the USA doesn't have fries. Not only is it unique to have fries here, they've also Korean-ified the fries. I want to know what a Taco Bell french fry actually tastes like. We got just some straight up fries. Not bad. There's a very flavorful dry seasoning they put on there, and then this red sauce, it is spicy. Let's get into the loaded fry aspect. They've got some meat on top. This looks like chicken. They've got tomatoes, nice big clumps of sour cream, melted cheese, and then they've got kimchi on here too. Oh boy, it's messy. I thought I could do this by hand. I cannot. Oh yeah, that's good. That is sauce to the gills, but I don't mind an over-saucing situation when you have loaded fries like this. The sauce is like fire sauce. I love that they're entry-level menu item. It's not medium. This is super spicy. They have some of the meat, which is hard to identify, but I believe it's chicken. Okay. I believe it's chicken from a can. Right here we have the ultimate bite, some of that chicken from a can, kimchi, a load of sauce. Before this bite, I want to show you one thing. Look over there. It turns out, at least at this Taco Bell, you can order upstairs, and you're not even within eyesight of anyone working here. I love that. Mmm. Melts of spicy, sour kimchi. It's a perfect match with these tomatoes with the sour cream to kind of cool things down. The sauce has its own spice. This is an amazing dish, and this is something you absolutely are not going to find in the USA anytime soon. And by anytime soon, I mean absolutely ever. Mmm. Cleanse the palate. Right here we have our choco-dia. That is a chocolate quesadilla. That is dessert. We'll get back to that soon. But first, the kimchi quesadilla. I thought I just ordered cheese, but it looks like they gave me cheese, chicken, and kimchi. This thing is fat, and it is fully loaded. Oh, man. This is all the more reason to book a plane ticket to Seoul to try something like this. There's something very satisfying about the cheese, the kimchi, and the chicken all together. It's like they've always belonged together, even though they grew up on different sides of the planet. Who knew this fusion of Mexican-American food and Korean food could fit together like a glove? Not like OJ's glove. Like a real good, nice fit. Moving on to our next dish, the kimchi burrito. Oh, that is a fat log of deliciousness. Mmm. This is a dish that makes me feel happy for the Korean people. There is nothing folks here love more than kimchi. It is the pride of this nation. We've got chicken. We've got kimchi. We've got sauce, cream, cheese. We've got a nice carbo rice bed. This is absolutely delicious. I wanted to not like this. Instead, I'm going to be itching tomorrow like, I need another kimchi fix at Taco Bell. The good news is, is that they also deliver. Look, that guy down there, he's bringing some happy kimchi addicts some more kimchi quesadillas. Speaking of quesadillas, right here we have our chocodilla. In the USA, we have the Choco Taco. It's Mexican, it's American, it's gluttonous, it's delicious. But here, they're doing something a little bit different. They use a very small tortilla shell, and they shove it full of chocolate. If you look closely, it resembles what I found in my baby's diaper this morning. Yep, looks exactly the same. Healthy baby. The chocolate's good. It's like a thick chocolate spread. That could be put on almost anything and taste nice. It's a little bit on the sweet side, and it's just strange that it's mixed with a normal flour tortilla. That said, not bad. My favorite part is the branding. Chocodilla. Choco Taco. Chocorito. Choco French Fries. Choco Coke. Really, the options for chocolate and Mexican food to collide, they're nearly limitless. But they should probably stop here, please. So that is Korean Taco Bell, and that is how they are destroying American fast food, which is by making it way more delicious than it was previously. Are we gonna top this today? I'm not sure, but I am gonna find out, because we still have a couple of fast food destinations ahead of us. Let's keep moving. So far, we've covered burgers, and we've covered tacos. But one important fast food category remains, and that is fried chicken. Right behind me, we have the master of fried chicken, KFC. The colonel here in Korea. In this country, KFC means Korean Fried Chicken. And the menu is unlike anything you've ever seen in North America. First of all, beer. That's right. In this land, people are treated like adults, and they can drink beer at a fast food restaurant without starting fights. In the USA, we don't have beer in our fast food restaurants, still fights. And then we have this. It says, Upgrabe. How? Up? Upgrabe plus gravy. Oh, okay. Who's that guy? So you can upgrade to the gravy tower. Gravy sauce, hash brown, mashed potatoes, sliced cheese, chicken fillet, and pepper dressing all in one beautiful combination. I have never seen something like this before. It looks like Thanksgiving between two buns. Let's go inside and see what else this menu has to offer. Here's the best part about the KFC here in Korea. First of all, I'm not in the main lobby area. I'm upstairs where everybody eats, and I still have an ordering kiosk here. Amazing. Now, there's a couple of special foods here that I want to point out to you. This is the Zinger Double Down Tongdari. Instead of any bread, they have two pieces of fried chicken as the buns. Amazing. But wait, there's more. Here, you can get Budweiser, Jim Beam Highball, or another type of Jim Beam. So those are the chicken burgers, but take a look at this snack section right here. Fried chicken skin. That looks nice. At last, the Upgrave Tower. Let's give it a shot. I'm going to order all this up, and this food is going to meet me at my table. All right, guys. We have our next meal right here, and it looks amazing. Here is my first surprise. They have salsa sauce here, but not at the Taco Bell. And also, I thought I was going to get a highball, but it turns out they don't have one. But they do have beer. All I had to say is, yes, I'm 19, and order a beer from a screen. And here it is. Oh, to be 19 in Korean again. This is pure chicken skin. Of course, I've had chicken skin all over Asia, especially in Japan, but never did I think I would go to a KFC where you could just get the chicken skin. If KFC is famous for anything, it's how good the skin is on their crispy fried chicken. Cheers. Crispy, greasy, it's high calorie, it's indulgent, seasoned perfectly. This is dangerous. This is the type of thing, if you eat too much, it will absolutely destroy your plumbing. It's one thing to destroy American fast food. It's another thing to destroy your apartment complex's entire toilet system. Meanwhile, we have this right here. The Double Zinger Burger. So it's called Double Zinger Tongdari. Tong means hole, and dari means thigh. Now, if you look at the bottom of it, it's getting mushy already. Meanwhile, on this side, we've got bacon, a whole hash brown, and we've got cheese. This is just a complete monstrosity. What the hell? Really, it's the only way in a long time I've been able to get between two thighs. Don't worry, my wife doesn't watch the show. Beyond that, the cheese inside, it is like a cheap gas station liquid cheese. It's not that great. The best part was the cheese. Dude, that is so rude. This is a public place, dude. I'm joking. The best part of this by far is the chicken. The chicken is legitimately good. Everything in between, questionable at best. I wouldn't advise putting a hash brown in there. But beyond that, there's some funky sauces, plus some kind of a chili sauce, so it's a little bit spicy. This thing is a mess. Is it good? It's like climbing a mountain. It's worth it to do it. And then, do you need to climb Mount Everest a second time? Not really. One more food remains right here. This is the Up Gravy Tower. I love the branding. I love the concept. So far, everything's going very well. Now, here they're doing kind of what Taco Bell does, which is Taco Bell only has about five ingredients, but they mix and match them to make 150 menu items. Here, what are we doing? We got buns already. We got chicken, what looks to be a zinger fried thigh already. We got cheese already. We got mashed potatoes already. We have hash browns already. On the very top, that is the gravy. The gravy goes on the bun. It goes a little bit on the hash brown. Then, you can see cheese, the pepper gravy, more gravy, mashed potatoes. It's like a Thanksgiving sandwich to go. So, we got mayonnaise, and we have gravy, and they're competing or working together. I can't decide. It's like Deadpool and Wolverine. Are they friends? It just goes down too smooth. This is a genius creation. The USA should take advantage of this moment immediately. Maybe they're using the Koreans as their test population, but it seems like it's working. This is a big winner. Here, we started off with destruction, but here we ended with an absolute delight. Let's keep moving. So far, we've tried three American fast food chains with surprise Korean menus, but did you know Korea actually has its own brand of fast food chain? It's right behind me, and it's called Lotteria. In the past, I made a video about Lotteria. I called it Asia's worst fast food chain or something like that. Only then, I was eating Lotteria in Vietnam. Here, I've come straight to the source. Here's the problem of Lotteria. Everything. Lotteria is like a Korean person saw pictures of fast food, but they never got to see, touch, or taste it. From there, they mixed those images with hallucinations and local ingredients, and what you get is some of the most off-the-wall fast food you've ever seen anywhere. For example, why does this burger have so many legs? Yes, tentacles. It's not only for adult films in Japan. It's also for fast food here in Korea. So, I'm gonna go find out if this is actually something legitimate and worth it inside. First of all, they have a protein drink cereal. The menu just begins immediately with confusion. What is that? Am I getting it? Yes. From here, we have something they call the natural cheese stick. Ah, I would hate to see the unnatural cheese stick. Ugh. We also have fried file fish. It looks like fish sticks. I love fish sticks. From here, you can get the double hanwoo. Now, if you don't know about hanwoo, this is Korea's version of wagyu. Japan has a lot of things that Korea also has, but they're just on different levels. You know, sake, soju, fresh ramen noodles, instant noodles, wagyu, hanwoo. Yeah. Hanwoo is better than wagyu. Who is this patriotic guy that keeps following me around? I mean, like I'm talking in real, Korean people better. There you have it. So, we have a testimonial. I think let's try it. Beyond the hanwoo, they also have the squid alive burger hot. Have you ever seen a better combination of words in your life? This product is no longer available for purchase as the ingredients have run out. So, please purchase another product. Sorry, I feel weak. At this point, I'll even take a dead squid. I don't know how to express how heartbreaking it is that they have giant posters of squid everywhere and it's not here. Moving on, we have the mozzarella burger. It looks like a regular beef patty with a patty of mozzarella. That actually looks pretty dang good. Let's try it out. Long cheese stick. It's like a normal cheese stick, but it's long. I'm so excited. Let's do this. All right, folks, we have our last meal, Lotteria. Do I respect it? No, but I'm glad it exists and I like seeing what kind of fun stuff they come up with. Early on in the history of fast food, this was the first place to do a whole fried cheese puck. And then all the other fast food places started doing it. But can I come to a place like this and just eat a normal cheeseburger? No, they put so much sauce on it and the beef tastes weird. All that being said, they have four foods here I've never tried before, but I am going to give them a fair shot. And I'm going to tell you if they're delicious or a complete disaster. Let's start with this. It says diet coach. So this is your coach right here. Your diet coach tells you that you should be eating 200 calories worth of liquid. 22 grams of protein though. It's a strange animal-free protein drink. It doesn't feel like it belongs on a fast food menu though. That said, it tastes pretty good. And then we have this big old cheese schlong right here. That was a big bite. Still so much cheesesteak. Sometimes in life, you don't need to actually make things better. You just need to make them longer. This cheesesteak is very good, very greasy, cheesy. It's got a nice crunch on the outside. I love it. Also, very long. Moving on to our next fried delight. This is a fried file fish. The file fish is interesting because it's a strange looking fish from what I found. Here's a picture of a file fish right here. Yeah, apparently that's what we're eating. What the hell is this? Wow. This is like a really dried out piece of fish and they put breading on top of it. You know what it reminds me of? You can go to the convenience store here and you can get dried out squid. It's a great drinking snack. This is the fried version of that. I can't believe someone thought to put this on the menu. I just think if you gave this to the average American, they would be perplexed. The batter is good. It's crunchy. The fish is chewy and sweet. Is it strange? Yes. Enjoyable? Also, yeah. Cleanse the palate. From here, we have two burgers remaining and one of them is a squid burger. For some reason, when you order in English, they just tell you we don't have it. But if you order in Korean, no problemo. Interesting. I don't want to get conspiratorial, but I feel like they're worried about bad reviews from foreigners, so they don't even let foreigners buy this. Meanwhile, we have this. This is what they're calling the mozzarella burger. It looks decent. We got a load of veggies on there, but this is the best part. That is a patty just full of cheese. And then we have this. This is the beef patty. This is why I don't like Lotteria. That's not beef. The beef patties here are not good. But this, this is basically melted cheese wrapped in panko breadcrumbs that have been fried. Keep in mind, this is not the Hanwoo. This is the Han... They're different. I may not enjoy Lotteria, but sometimes I do enjoy Lotteria. You see how conflicted this place makes me? That beef patty, it looks terrible. But then they put that melted cheese hockey puck underneath and everything is okay again. The cheese just literally oozing out of there. The reality is, you could just eat this without the burger patty and it might be even better. It's so satisfying. Aside from the patty, everything else here is pretty amazing. Actually, I like the vegetables. That sauce is not bulgogi. It's like a thick balsamic vinegar. It feels very classy, even though we're in such a casual restaurant. In the end, do I like it? Guiltily, I do. From here, we are moving on to our final burger of the day. This is the squid burger. Oh, there it is. Oh my god, there's a lot of lettuce. Sorry, you can't hide forever, little guy. That is nice, big, thick, fried squid tentacles all the way up to the squid's waistline. Somehow, the squid lost its head. It's not just a piece of squid, but underneath there is some sauce that is on top of a patty that they say is also made from squid. Maybe that's where its head went. It's so crunchy. It's mixed with a very good Korean sauce. It's sweet, very spicy. This is the type of sauce you would usually find on Korean fried chicken. Only here, they're putting it on the squid. Meanwhile, look inside of that patty. It's all orange. It's like very unnaturally orange. This burger, it's confusing. It's a little scary, but it might be great. First of all, that squid has nice, narrow tentacles, so they're frying all the way through. It's just straight up crunchy. It's not even chewy like typical calamari would be. The patty doesn't taste like any animal in particular. It's very crunchy, though. It gives it a nice little base of support, so you're not just eating some random, awkwardly-shaped squid. Overall, I had something like this in Japan. That was a soft-shell crab. It was not that good, but this is pretty good. I mean, this is the kind of fast food place you bring your friend to to say, oh, ha ha ha, look, they have squid inside of a burger. And then, turns out, it's pretty good. And then you get married, even though you're both guys, because that's cool enough. It's a sandwich that'll turn you gay. That's my point, in a good way. Not that there could ever be a bad way to be gay. So that is four items, plus a strange drink from Lotteria. I gotta say, McDonald's and Burger King and these other kind of standard American restaurants, the more they try to Koreanify their menu, Lotteria is always five steps ahead. They look at McDonald's and what they're doing, and they go, okay, cute, well, how about our cheese stick is unusually long? Is Lotteria my favorite fast food? No. Am I glad it exists? Yes. Now, from everything I ate today, if I could only export one food from Korea to the USA, what would it be? Everything from Taco Bell. The Taco Bell experience here absolutely blew my mind. There's something perfect about a kiss of kimchi with a little bit of Tex-Mex. If you guys agree, I say we set up a date, we go to the Taco Bell headquarters, and we protest. And then it turns into a riot, and then, honestly, what do people say? They say, riots are the language of people who want kimchi in their Taco Bell. Before we go, I want to say a huge thank you to my friend and local guide, Joe. Thanks, Joe. Thank you, man. Joe was instrumental in helping us find all of these locations for this video. He is a guide. He puts on food tours and custom tours, too. So, if you're interested in doing a tour with my guide, Joe, you can find his information downstairs in the description box. Thanks, Joe. Thank you, man.