I appoligize for all the food stuff in the past couple days. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Maybe it’s that I’m heading to the states next week for a vacation and am anticipating being able to rest on my hind-quarters and eat off the infinate smogasboard that is America.

That said, one place I won’t be going is Sorabol Korean BBQ & Asian Noodles, which, as Asian Week tells us, is the first Korean fast food chain in the world.

Sorabol Korean BBQ & Asian Noodles is quickly joining Hot Dog on a Stick and Sbarro as a common sight in that most American of dining locales: the shopping mall food court.
With 15 locations in California, Nevada and the Philippines, and plans to expand to Washington, D.C., Seattle and New York City, this family-owned chain is spreading Korean dishes to the hungry, shopped-out mainstream masses and challenging Panda Express in its domination of Asian food court fare.

I’ve seen Sorabol on Market Street in San Francisco. My friend and I went in, looking for a quick alternative to Subway, which I believe is/was next door. If I remember correctly their noodle bowls sell for about $9. Granted, Market Street is the headquarters of the Starbucks Socialist empire, but $9 doesn’t spell fast food to me. So we went to Subway.

As the first Korean fast-food chain in the United States, Sorabol is not only bringing Korean cuisine to mainstream consumers — it’s broadening their cultural palate beyond sushi and orange chicken. “People are realizing that there is more to Asian cuisine than Chinese and Japanese,” said CEO Richard Hong, son of the Korean immigrant founders.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with bringing Korean food to the masses. I’m biased, but I think it’s the best food in the world relative to taste, variety, and price. But Korean food is a tricky animal. The best way to commercialize Korean food would be to set up a kind of samgyupsal house, where people are cooking pork or beef at individual charcoal barbeques and getting loaded on cheap soju and beer.

Problem is, this will never happen in a Western country. The liability is too high and restaurants are too focused on getting as many butts in and out as fast as possible. I went to a samgyupsal place in Oakland once and they brought the meat on a plate, already cooked, and it cost about the same price as a steak. I wanted to throw it back into the kitchen.

What’s more, the company refuses to “Americanize” its menu for the notoriously finicky, white American palate, or tone down dishes that can send even the spiciest-food lovers gasping for water. At Sorabol, you can not only find typical Korean BBQ fare like bulgogi and kalbi, but also traditional dishes like the spicy soup yukejang, as well as dishes that challenge the palate like the spicy tofu stew soon dubu.

Oh come on. Refuse to Americanize? Opening your own fast food chain sounds pretty f-ing Americanized to me. Nine dollar bowls of noodles? Perhaps not very Americanized. I’m not too hip on the “notoriously finicky, white American palate” comment either, Asian Week.