Cultural Ambassadors

There is a coffee shop that I frequent in Jeonju which serves decent coffee and serves some food. My friends and I go there several times a week and have befriended most of the staff. I like to get these fluffy, delicious, big pretzels they serve. I often opt for the one dusted with a little Parmesan cheese. The pretzels come with sauce, I always order pizza (marinara) sauce with mine. Every time I do this the person taking my order makes the strangest face, sometimes they will look at me and say, "Really?" This always perplexed me. How can that combination sound bad? It seems only natural to me. I asked one of my friends that works at the coffee shop what sauce I should order with the pretzel and she told me cream cheese. Weird.

Today I told my friend Ryan about this oddity and he immediately got up and confronted our Korean coffee slinging friends about the situation. He said that they had to try it with the pizza sauce. I walked over with my fresh, hot and delicious pretzel, complete with pizza sauce (OBVIOUSLY) and offered some to them. We insisted that they try it. After a lot of fuss about how they didn't want to try it and other objections two of our friends finally took a piece and dipped it, ever so slightly, into the pizza sauce. They looked at each other as if they were trying some new exotic cuisine that they had never realized existed. They very cautiously ate the pieces of pretzel. It seemed as if they were analyzing each bit, trying to decide how it tasted. They both nodded and said it was good. "See, see" said Ryan. Satisfied with the results Ryan and I returned to our seats. I told Ryan that I was pretty happy that we made that happen. He dubbed us true cultural ambassadors.