Hello! Today, I am introducing a new menu from ‘Banolim Pizza’ called the Red Bacon, Red Bulgogi Half-and-Half Pizza, part of the ‘The Red Effect’ series. This menu was launched after the summer new product season, so it has a strong event-like nature! It seems that they have composed the menu to match the representative color of Budweiser, red, by introducing the Budweiser beer and pizza combo set. Let’s take a look at what kind of menu it is?!
Banolim Pizza Red Half-and-Half Pizza Price and Features
The menu I am introducing this time is a collaboration with Budweiser! It’s not just a simple beer and pizza set, but a pizza using dough fermented with Budweiser yeast. This dough is only available for this season, so I’m looking forward to it even more! The prices are as follows: Red Half-and-Half Pizza Regular 18,900 KRW / Large 22,900 KRW, Red Bulgogi Regular 18,900 KRW / Large 22,900 KRW / Red Bacon Pizza Regular 15,900 KRW, Large 19,900 KRW. For reference, you can add a Budweiser Alubottle to the beer and pizza set, and one bottle is 3,900 KRW!
Side menus were also released together. In line with the red concept, they introduced Bulgogi Kimchi Fried Rice 5,900 KRW, Kimchi Fried Rice 4,900 KRW, and Spicy Cheese Tteokbokki 5,900 KRW. I ordered a large Red Half-and-Half Pizza with added cheese crust (+3,000 KRW) for 25,900 KRW, along with the Spicy Cheese Tteokbokki!
Banolim Pizza Red Half-and-Half Pizza Components
Let’s briefly check the menu composition. I ordered a large size half-and-half pizza and added cheese crust. The price of 25,900 KRW for a large size seems quite reasonable!
Since it’s a half-and-half pizza, it naturally comes in 8 slices for the large size, with one side being bacon and the other side being bulgogi. Both menus do not have toppings with strong personalities or visually striking features, so they don’t stand out immediately but give a slightly different feel. However, when viewed separately, they can be clearly distinguished.
The Red Bacon Pizza, as the name suggests, is a combination menu of bacon and corn! Although it includes bacon, corn is the main ingredient, so the proportion of bacon feels a bit low. There are about 1-2 pieces of bacon per slice!
And there is a sprinkle of red powder on top of the toppings, which is presumably chili powder. It doesn’t seem to be red pepper powder. There were no other particularly noticeable toppings!
Next is the Red Bulgogi! As the name suggests, this menu features red bulgogi stir-fry as a pizza topping. Although there have been pizzas with bulgogi stir-fry before, they usually added bulgogi stir-fry or kimchi to existing pizza toppings, but this seems to be the first time bulgogi is prominently featured on a pizza!
The bulgogi topping seems to use pork belly. The spicy topping only shows meat and onions, and how they captured the bulgogi flavor seems really important!
This menu is said to have enhanced the spiciness by using gochujang tomato sauce, but since I haven’t tasted it yet, I hope it’s not too spicy! Haha
Spicy Cheese Tteokbokki Price and Composition Features
Shall we take a look at the side menu, Spicy Cheese Tteokbokki?! It was released simultaneously with Kimchi Fried Rice as part of the Red Effect series! I thought tteokbokki would go better with pizza than fried rice, so I ordered it, but the visual itself is a very typical cheese tteokbokki appearance.
According to the description, it’s subtly spicy, but just by looking at the color, it seems so ordinary that it’s questionable whether it’s really spicy. There was no option to choose the level of spiciness. Still, it seems like it would taste quite good.
Banolim Pizza Red Half-and-Half Pizza Taste
Let’s taste it right away! The key points of this menu seem to be the dough, toppings, and spiciness, don’t they!? I first tried the Red Bacon.
The spiciness felt when eating the first slice was not as spicy as expected, so the spiciness was hardly noticeable. It was surprisingly mild. I didn’t choose a less spicy option, but I could eat it quite comfortably, even though I usually struggle with spicy food.
As for the toppings, although it’s a combination of bacon and corn, the taste is mostly focused on the corn. So the topping ratio feels like 8:2 rather than 5:5 between corn and bacon. In fact, the topping ratio is almost like that. As you can see, there are about 1-2 pieces of bacon per slice.
Some people might prefer slightly roasted corn, but the concept of eating corn as the main bacon topping might not be easily understood. If it were complemented with a somewhat strong-flavored sauce, it could have been a reasonably priced menu, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s a really ambiguous menu.
The chewy texture of the dough is somewhat comforting! Especially the crust part is quite chewy, and with the added cheese, the texture is very satisfying. If you dip it in garlic sauce, it tastes quite good. I recommend ordering one more garlic sauce! Personally, I found the crust tastier than the pizza part…
Next, I must try the Red Bulgogi! At first glance, it looks quite spicy, so I was a bit nervous and immediately tried a slice.
However, it wasn’t as spicy as I thought. But the taste of the topping was definitely stronger than the bacon I had earlier. The bulgogi topping was cooked in a way that made it seem very crispy, almost like bacon.
Personally, if you have to choose between the two menus, I would recommend this one. However, this menu also lacks flashy toppings, which is a bit disappointing. Still, it’s a much better choice for a cost-effective snack.
Spicy Cheese Tteokbokki Taste
Ah! Also, I tried the side menu, Spicy Cheese Tteokbokki, and it wasn’t as spicy as expected. I don’t know if there’s a difference between stores, but if you think of the sweet tteokbokki you used to eat at old snack bars, that’s exactly the taste. I don’t know how it would be for foreigners, but for Koreans who are used to new spicy menus every year, it’s a very bland taste…
If you have high expectations for spiciness, it’s a bit of an ambiguous menu to recommend. It’s just right for someone like me who can’t handle spicy food well, but for those who can easily eat ‘Buldak’, it might feel like a children’s snack! Haha
Anyway, I ate about half of the tteokbokki from this menu by myself. I was a bit nervous and prepared for a strong spiciness, but in reality, the spiciness wasn’t as strong as expected. Since the concept is cost-effectiveness and beer and pizza, it seems best to enjoy it as a moderately light snack menu.
As I mentioned earlier, the Red Bacon is very difficult to recommend, and if you do eat it, the Red Bulgogi is a better choice. Instead of thinking of it as greasy bulgogi stir-fry on top of a pizza, think of it as a spicy bacon, and you can enjoy it quite comfortably!
