RESTAURANT OF THE WEEK Calling all bearded bikers...

Inside a Lotteria in central Seoul in 2021 / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

Lotteria has been synonymous with a lot of what's wrong with Koreanized takes on Western fast food. With its overly sweet bulgogi sauce, odd condiment selections and insistence on giving most of its menu items an unnecessary Korean touch, it's still easy to have a bad experience there. But it may be time for a revisit.

Despite its notoriety among foreign residents, I have some friends who swear by it, claiming Lotteria's Classic Cheese Burger is superior to its counterparts at major U.S. fast-food restaurants operating here.

I wouldn't go that far, but I will admit the Classic Cheese Burger is basic and stripped down enough to be inoffensive to most burger eaters' palates. It's not loaded up with any overly sweet fixings, just a bun, burger and a slice of processed cheese. You can also get a Double Classic Cheese Burger, and it's possible to customize it through the restaurant kiosk; adding a slice of bacon makes it a little more exciting.

In 2018, the burger's sudden popularity became widely discussed on English-language food communities here. "This change is disturbing," Joe McPherson wrote on his blog ZenKimchi. "It’s challenging everything I know."

It's worth adding that Lotteria also has decent fried chicken and ice cream desserts. Around 2020, they even introduced a vegetarian option, the Miracle Burger.

A Double Classic Cheese Burger from Lotteria, Dec. 19 / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

But the menu is not the only reason why it is this week's Restaurant of the Week.

Late last year, the Lotteria nearest to my home closed down for renovations for a few days. After it reopened, it looked basically the same. But then I figured out what was missing: that asinine poetry that had decorated the interior.

"Bearded (or sometimes Redneck) bikers munching sliders," it began — and before you ask, no, Lotteria does not serve sliders.

Crafted with all the care of a 2,000 won shirt at Dongmyo Flea Market, it dates back to at least 2013.

For posterity, I present the rest of the text here, with punctuation added for somewhat improved comprehension: "...look to the past for better riders, stars and stripes and girls in stetsons, cows in buns and boys in westerns, rock then roll for big check paydays, mountain ranges, ten lane freeways, this land is our land but once was their land, the untamed food of gold rush miners, the beef, the fries, the roadside diners, oh say can you see from the nation of night its gift to the world the burger is might!"

It actually comes off a little more coherently when presented all together in proper sequence. Now I think I like it more than Lotteria's more recent phrase, "Scientifically the best burger you'll ever eat," which is scrawled on the walls of some Lotterias.

Inside a Lotteria in central Seoul in 2021 / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

Has this off-beat poetry disappeared from every Lotteria everywhere? I'm not sure. Why did it exist in the first place? Who wrote it, and why was it chosen for a burger chain in Korea? And what's with how it was always displayed, chopped up and scrambled so it makes even less sense?

If you're anywhere in Korea, there is probably a Lotteria somewhere near you.