- I've never eaten a slice of pizza with chopsticks.
- It's a revolution, no...
too much?
- I mean, I think you've gone too far,
but I also like going too far.
- Great.
- I'm Scott, and I eat all kinds of pizza,
but my friend Mark, he is a pizza purist.
So, we're trying the craziest concoctions
claiming to be pizza, but are they "Really Dough?"
Look at all these things, Oh!
Let's look at this one.
- What's that?
- Crust, sauce, cheese, what more do you need?
But, look at that thing, man.
Oh my God, oh no, all these things.
Yeah, pizza.
- Scott, all you wanna do is talk about pizza.
You need to broaden your horizons.
- What?
- 'Cause you really are stuck in a pizza box.
- You're -- awesome pun, but you're a pizza guy.
Let me ask you a question.
- Go ahead.
- Is pizza the greatest food?
- One of my favorites.
- I'll take that as a yes.
- But I don't eat pizza breakfast, lunch and dinner.
- I'm fine, it's a balanced meal.
My doctor says I shouldn't be alive,
but I eat all kinds of Mexican pizza,
Japanese pizza, Korean pizza.
I eat all that kind of stuff.
Listen, if you can do a kimchi pizza,
what's wrong with that?
- Kimchi?
- There's a place that's doing it now on 19th Street.
- Listen, you know me, I'll try anything.
- I'm gonna get you the kimchi pizza.
- OK.
And then you'll eat your pizza, and you'll eat your words.
- Can you bring me some kimchi on the side, as well?
- Maybe, I don't know.
- All right. - I'll be back.
Oh, kid.
- Where's the door?
Excuse me, I'm looking for Chef Woong?
- Oh, I'm Woong.
Hey, Scott, how are you?
I'm Woong. - Great.
Thank you so much for coming out and chatting with me.
- It's my pleasure.
- I eat a lot of pizza.
- Sure.
- And some of my friends, my friend Mark is one of them,
try to get me to eat other foods.
I can always find a little common thread
that takes it back to pizza,
and I've heard about this thing that you do,
that's got mozzarella on top of some kind
of a kimchi pancake, and that's about all I know.
- Oh, we call it jeon.
It's a traditional pizza-looking dish.
The base is actually a batter,
and then we put kimchi in it.
The twist is, I put mozzarella cheese on top.
It looks like a pizza.
- So, oh.
- It's pretty good.
- I've got a million questions.
- Sure.
- How long is the kimchi sitting in the batter?
- Like a minute or two.
- Do you make a lot of these? - Yes.
- Do you cut it into triangles?
- Yes.
- Is it wheat flour? - White flour.
- What kinda mozzarella? - Shredded mozzarella.
- Do you pick it up or do you eat it with chopsticks?
- Depends on people, I guess.
- There's no sauce on it? - No.
- Is that traditionally how jeon is?
Korean pizzeria, it'll say jeon?
I wonder if that's uncouth.
To the oven, you just melt the cheese.
What's in the batter?
You ever just try to think about like,
what's the weirdest thing you would ever put
on top of a pizza?
- Let me think, probably no.
- Cool, I'm excited.
I'll probably have more questions about it later, but--
- I mean, there's not a better way of explaining.
- I would love to have one, do you have time to make me one?
- Yes. - Awesome.
- I'll go into the kitchen and make you one right now.
- Awesome, I will anticipate.
I've always been intrigued by a pizza
made with new styles of dough.
But kimchi as a crust, seems like it may be
outside my pizza territory.
That makes me wonder if Mark is even gonna try it.
- When you walk into a pizzeria,
the aroma should punch you right in the face.
Pizza should be baked in an oven.
Pizza should be eaten with you hands,
never a fork and knife.
Pizza dough: flour, water, yeast, nothing else.
- It smells so good in here,
I don't mind eating it all myself if Mark hates it.
- Go ahead.
We're gonna make a Korean-style pizza.
- Kimchi pizza.
- I have all the ingredients set up already.
This is our flour mix, flour plus cornstarch
and potato starch.
Then we mix in with water - Mix it in water.
- About one scoop. - One scoop.
- Kimchi, scallions,
Korean pepper flakes. - Pepper flakes.
- A little of our soy sauce, sesame oil,
mix it in to a nice little batter and pan fry it.
- Pan fry.
- Now.
Place it in the middle and evenly spread it out.
It makes it into a nice circle shape.
Some people might argue that it's not a pizza.
- It's not a pizza. - It doesn't have the dough.
Its a batter, it's a different ingredient that's going in,
but I think it's a pizza.
When you look at it, it looks like a pizza.
It eats like a pizza, then it is a pizza, I guess.
- I guess.
- I'll flip it over, put a nice amount of cheese on top,
and I'll finish in the oven about 375,
and I'll have it nice and toasty.
- Nice and crispy. - Until it's golden ready.
The pancake is pretty much ready.
A bunch of peppers on top.
I'll just cut it just like a pizza.
All nice melted. - Cheese pull.
- This is ready, and let's go see
what Scott thinks about this.
- "Really Dough?"
- Oh wow, whoa.
I did not think it was gonna look this much like pizza.
- Oh.
- It absolutely has the visual of pizza.
- Yes.
- Do you mind if I take a quick picture?
- Sure.
- I gotta 'cause this is like, oh yeah.
You know it always looks sexier from above.
- Yes.
- Boom, there we go.
It clearly looks like a pizza.
- Yes.
- But wait, what's going on over here?
- This is our flavored soy sauce.
We made it into a gel, so you actually put one on top
of a slide, and you eat it with the soy sauce.
- I've seen a lot of gelatinous things in my life.
Soy sauce is not one of them.
Bonkers.
What's the proper way to do this?
- If you wanna eat it with the hand,
you can eat it with the hand.
- I do wanna eat it with my hands.
- All right.
- Yeah, I wanna-- - Let me just get this.
- Look at this.
This is.
- Let me do the honor and give you.
- Oh yeah, would you mind soy-ing me up?
- Piece of soy.
- Just one little bit?
- You have to try it first.
- You're right. - To see how it is.
- It's sliding around, it's so beautiful.
OK, I'm going for it.
This is so weird.
What is happening?
You've tricked me.
- It's in good way.
- No, in a great way, it's so good.
I'm happy about the trick.
What does that word pizza mean to you?
- If there's no cheese,
it's hard to call it a pizza, I think.
Anything oily, crusty, crunchy piece of pie
with cheese on top, except for dessert pizza, I mean.
- Well that's, don't even get me started.
We already went down that road.
What do we have to do to this to make it a pizza?
- Get rid of the chocolate sauce, the strawberries, the nuts,
and put tomato sauce.
- Actually this kimchi will go along pretty good
with cheese, because if you think about it,
basic pizza has acidity, as a tomato sauce.
- Absolutely, oh my God.
The acidity of the kimchi totally matches up
with the fattiness of cheese.
Great combo.
You've combined sauce and dough, and you didn't even know.
- Yes.
- That's gotta be on your T-shirts.
- We'll open up a franchise
in the Midwest.
- Yeah, this is a major brainstorm,
or it could all be crumbled by Mark.
- No, he never leaves Brooklyn, it's OK.
- Ah!
- Actually been to Mark's place once.
- You have? - In Brooklyn.
Yes, it was good. - It's not a bad joint, right?
- No, it was good.
- You think what you want.
All right, beautiful.
Oh, what a beautiful box.
- That's for Mark.
- Did you right a little note for him?
- Yes.
- It says you better call this pizza or else.
- And little soy jellies.
- This is gorgeous.
Okay, I have to keep this so level.
Thank you so much, Chef.
- No problem.
- This is great. - I hope Mark likes it.
- I'll let you know what he thinks.
- All right.
- Have mercy, Mark.
- All right, Marcus, quit playing with the wood, let's go.
We got pizza.
- Kimchi.
- Yeah, baby.
- A note.
- And this.
- Happy Holidays.
You sure there's a pizza in here?
- I'm positive there's a pizza in there.
- All right, let's see what we got.
- I just had some, oh look at this.
I know--
- Like a giant tart.
- I know it looks like a giant tart.
Don't worry about this whole thing.
Can we stick this back in your oven,
just hover it a little bit.
Just to melt the cheese down?
- All right, let's heat this up.
- OK. - All right.
- You know what I mean? - I'm gonna have to take it.
Okay, let's get a tray.
You know what, let's put it on a paddle.
- I got an idea, look at his.
- Let me do this.
- Oh no, put this, you know what to do.
Yeah, just do a flip.
Flip and then a flip.
You know what I mean?
And then a flip, all right.
- There we go.
How's that? - There we go, it's perfect.
I know it looks funny, but it tastes money.
There's a rhyme.
- I can't believe you're gonna make me eat a kimchi pizza.
- Yeah, now, here's what they gave me.
They make this soy gelatin cube,
and you delicately put it on top of the pizza.
But on the way over here it all melted, so,
I still think we should pick this up
and maybe drizzle a little bit of it.
Just a little tiny drizzle.
That's it, that's it, that's all you need.
Yep, yep, yep.
One more little raindrop.
That's it. - All right.
- That's it. - OK.
- You see?
Get it.
Right?
- It's so good.
I want more.
- I know you do.
- Put some more of this on it.
- Now, think of it being a cube?
- I don't wanna think right now.
I just wanna eat.
- It's got all the texture, right?
- Of?
- Of a pizza, come on.
- Absolutely not.
- What?
How is this not a pizza?
Does it have cheese?
- Yep.
- Does it have acidity, just like tomato sauce?
- Yes.
- Does it have a little bit of crunch at the edge?
- So does an Oreo cookie.
- It's a round thing, cheese in the center,
cut into triangles, pick it up.
- Is a cheesecake a pizza?
- A cheesecake is not a pizza.
- A cheesecake is round, you got your firm cheese.
- OK.
- Not a pizza.
- OK, so what would make this a pizza?
- Well you know, pizza dough.
- The kimchi is not the topping, it's in the dough.
- OK, I think you're overthinking it a little.
- But kimchi is a fermented product.
Pizza dough is a fermented product.
There's acidity just like tomato sauce.
There's cheese, that's mutz, there's pepper flakes.
- Okay, Scott, it's a pizza.
- Wait, did I seriously convince you?
- I just want you to leave.
- But just give it to me straight.
Pizza or not a pizza?
- It's probably in the top five
of all the things you've brought here,
but it's not a pizza.
- The verdict is in, Mark loves it.
He had multiple slices, but he says it's not a pizza.
- Where is this place?
- This place is on 19th Street, it's called Hwaban.
- Can you get me a reservation?
- I can get you a reservation.
- Great.
- Tonight?
- Tomorrow.
- Tomorrow, OK, fair enough.
Can I get a reservation at your pizzeria?
- Absolutely not.
- Oh, man, you said absolutely and that got me up,
and you said not, and you brought me down.
You really know how to play with my heartstrings.
- I had enough of you for one day.
- Thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe
to Thrillist, where you can check out
our other "Really Dough?" episodes,
like that time I brought Mark
that low-carb, sweet delicious pizza.
- And don't forget to like, comment and chat.
Did I say comment again?
- You said comment.
- Comment. - I believe.
And you said like, and you said share.
- All right, good.
- You're better than you think you are.