Korean Air Woke Me Up For A Corn Dog?!

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Each week, my Meal of the Week feature examines an airline meal from my travels over the years. This may be a meal from earlier in the week or it may be a meal served over a decade ago.

One aspect to my Korean Air flight from Seoul to Incheon was so quirky I thought it merited its own Meal of the Week shout-out: midnight, mid-flight corn dogs.

Corn Dogs On Korean Air

A corn dog is a wiener/hot dog/frank (pick your poison) on a stick that has been coated in a thick layer of cornmeal batter and deep fried.

It’s a popular American snack and whether because of the American presence during and after the Korean War or for other reasons, has also become very popular in South Korea, where it is a street food staple and most just call it a hot dog.

Imagine this. It’s the middle of the flight in the middle of the night. All of a sudden the bright lights come on and flight attendants appear handing out a corn dog to every passenger along with ketchup. It was served in a Korean Air-branded box and called an “original K-hotdog.”

Confession: I loved it…my goodness, I have not had one of these for years and it brought back happy childhood memories of eating these at school. But there is a very good reason I don’t eat heart disease on a stick anymore, though I was happy to make an exception for purposes of my flight review (or so I told myself).

If you didn’t read my mini-review of the flight yesterday, you’ll note this was just a midflight snack: there was a large meal served after takeoff and another before landing:

While I give Korean Air high marks overall for its transpacific service in economy class, waking everyone up in the middle of the night to serve a corn dog is probably not the wisest choice. Instead, I’d quietly go down the aisle with the lights off or at least turned down and offer it only to those who are awake…