One of the things that I really enjoy here in Korea is what we call “toast”. In Korea toast commonly refers to a grilled sandwich with a wide variety of toppings and condiments added to the bread. You can find toast carts, toast shops, and there are even toast chains! One of the biggest toast chains in Korea is Isaac Toast.
Isaac Toast has been around for years in Korea. First opened in 2003, and named after Isaac from the Bible, the chain has grown in both popularity and locations. In fact, you can find Isaac toast in Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan!
The chain has also expanded its choice of offerings. In the beginning, I seem to remember the toasted sandwiches being a bit more simple. Just cheese, ham, and cabbage with various sauces were there. These days, Isaac Toast offers a much larger range of toasted sandwiches, plus drinks too.
Today I decided to order the Deep Cheese Bacon Potato Toast (딥치즈베이컨포테이토) for dinner.
Originally, Isaac Toast was more like a food truck style for cooking and serving, but these days many new locations also include a seating area, like the one where I bought my sandwich. Today though, I decided to go to a local park and have an evening picnic.
As I waited for the sandwich to be ready, I looked around the shop. There were many posters and pictures showing how wonderful the food was and newer menu items.
The smell was really good as the toast and various other ingredients fried on the flat top grill.
I was really anticipating the sandwich as we walked to the park.
Now, parks in Korea can be very plain or be very, very, interesting.
The local park that I chose for my ‘picnic’ tonight was unique, in that the jungle gym for children was shaped like an old ship! It was very cool!
There were slides, climbing areas, and little bouncy horses (that didn’t look like horses).
The park also had some nice green areas, and some benches for people to sit on when they are tired, or just want to enjoy their toast sandwich.
I sat down on one of the benches, and took my Deep Cheese Bacon Potato Toast out of the plastic bag. Wrapped in a pretty plain white paper, with some writing on it, it smelled really good!
Upon opening of the paper wrapper, you could see the cheese sauce just oozing out onto the paper, showing just how much cheese there was on it.
This particular sandwich had a number of ingredients. There were two types of cheese. One seemed to be a pretty standard mozzarella cheese, what we call pizza cheese here in Korea. The second was a neon-orange nacho cheese, which was easily the most evident and had a slight spicy flavor to it.
Next, there is the bacon. This was pretty well cooked, although there wasn’t a strong bacon flavor to the sandwich.
There is also a bit of scrambled egg. This is pretty standard on a lot of the Isaac Toast sandwiches. One thing that might be a bit unusual to many people is that there are actually pieces of corn in the scrambled egg. So if you are not prepared, you might think that there is something weird in your sandwich, but no, it’s just sweet corn.
Perched upon the egg and bacon is a hash potato patty. I really like has potato patties, but I found that this one was a bit undercooked, and it would have been better if it had been crispier.
Finally, there is Isaac Toast’s special spread. I’m not sure exactly what the sauce is made of, but it’s really tasty! From the picture I took it looks like some sort of mixture of butter and other ingredients. I don’t know the exact make-up, but it’s delicious.
After finishing my toasted sandwich, I walked around the park a bit, and looked at hills that were in the background.
There certainly are some nice places to go to in Korea, and some nice places to have a quick picnic for dinner!