I’ve been in Korea long enough around military installations to know the pattern. Those of you who’ve been around even for a little while yourselves might know it too.
What pattern?
First, a bit of an introduction. On military installations, food services are contracted out to vendors. For example, Osan Air Base has a Chili’s and a 24-hour diner called “Checkertails.” They also have the golf course restaurant, which in past 15 years or so has changed a few times and has now settled on a barbecue place called “Par and Char.” Dining at the Enlisted and Officers Clubs are also run by vendors. The same goes for every other installation on the peninsula, to include Camp Humphreys and their most famous contracted vendor – Texas Roadhouse.
And it’s my lunch yesterday at the Texas Roadhouse that brings on this little rant.
Now this is the pattern: When the base wants to start up a food establishment, they open it up for bidding. A Korean vendor will win the contract and get to work. And in almost every case, they’ll do a pretty good job of it…for a year or so. But once that honeymoon is over, they start cutting corners and the quality starts slipping. It could be that they bid too low and just can’t keep it up. Or maybe they just figure out that they’re in a very small market without a lot of alternatives and so they change their attitude to “where else are they going to go?” Or maybe it’s a bit of a combination – as the surrounding area builds up and a wider variety of restaurants move in, installation vendors lose a chunk of their market, so they’re simply aiming low for those who aren’t adventurous enough to go outside of the fence.
But the pattern can be cyclical too, with Osan’s Chili’s as a prime example. Chili’s opened its restaurant on Osan Air Base in March of 2006. Of course, it was flooded with patrons early on, and the food actually passed as authentic Chili’s fare. You can’t mess that up, right? But it’s had its ups and downs, and over the last few years it seemed that whenever I’d check in to see if it had gotten better, the novelty of the place just wasn’t worth the visit. But with the Texas Roadhouse opening at Humphreys in January of 2019, Chili’s knew it had to step up its game. They even closed down to remodel and to tell you the truth, I haven’t had a bad meal in the two or three times I’ve eaten there since.
I wish I could say the same for Texas Roadhouse. It seems to have gone in the opposite direction…but then again, that’s how the pattern works. I ate there not long after it opened and it was pretty good. But when I ate there yesterday it was a mess. The “steak fries” that came with my burger were mostly “bottom-of-the-bag” chips and pieces. As for the burger itself, I already know enough to order “medium” if I hope to get “medium-rare” in Korea, but it wasn’t even that. On top of that, it was poorly composed in a pile that ended up better off eaten with a knife and fork from the start. But at least there’s the bread, right? Well…it was warm. But it lacked the light, doughy goodness that makes you want to eat two basketfuls before you get your entrée. What a disappointment.
The pattern isn’t a perfect predictor though. There is one restaurant on Osan that has been fairly consistent. Since its shutdown for a major remodel a few years ago, Checkertails Diner has been consistently bad. There was no honeymoon. I have had cause on more than one occasion to tell them that if they were a real restaurant that didn’t have a captive audience, they wouldn’t last a month. From wilted-lettuce “salads” to undercooked “pancakes” (turn them over and you’ll see without fail where the cook pressed into it with the spatula to see if it was done) to leather-dry chicken sandwiches, they hit “bad” with nearly every dish. The only time I’ll eat anything other than their chicken bulgogi is if I have a coupon for something free, and even then, I do it with the expectation that it’s going to be awful. I must admit though, I kind of enjoy filling out the customer comment cards with lines like, “just because you’re giving away the hamburger doesn’t mean you have to make it horrible.” Maybe I’ve just not gotten over them dropping a perfectly good meatball sub from the menu…
Now, I’ve been accused before of being a bit picky with my food here. I remember years back when I ordered chicken-fried chicken at the Enlisted club and they brought me chicken-fried steak. I sent it back, and they rushed an order of the chicken…and when I say “rushed,” I mean, fast enough that it was pink and cold in the middle. So, when I sent that back my companions started ribbing me. But here’s the deal: my standard is that if you’re a food establishment serving me food, it better be good enough that I’ll leave my house for it. If I overcook steak-fry remnants from the bottom of the bag at home (not that I ever would), that’s my choice. If I get that at a restaurant where I’m paying for legit steak fries, I’m gonna have something to say.
If you’ve read my previous posts, you know I love Korean food. The thing about Korean food in Korea though (as is the case with food just about anywhere else) is that your food has got to be good if you want to keep your restaurant going (I’d say the major exception in Korea is coffee shops, with their over-sweetened drinks and dry pastries). It’s a given – the most successful restaurants put out a consistently great product.
But Korean chefs either don’t know the American palate (a tall order for anyone to be sure), or they get into the business and find it so far over their heads that they just decide to chuck the whole “quality food that our customers will like” angle and churn out food that is barely passable. Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough competition on installations to maintain a quality momentum for establishments that want to do it right. Thankfully though, there are plenty of alternatives outside the fence, and maybe someday places inside will come to that realization and dial it back to simpler fare that you just can’t screw up.
Like a good Waffle House.
