DAIRY QUEEN

Last week, Dairy Queen opened its very first branch here in Seoul, and on Saturday they had their grand opening. As part of that grand opening they ran a very special promotion where the first 100 people in the line would win free Blizzards for a month, and the first 100 people to buy ice cream cakes would win free Fan Set Combos for a year. As a non American I have never eaten Dairy Queen before, in fact I only had a very loose idea of what the place even was, I imagined an ice cream parlour of sorts, a farm or possibly a milk and cheese shop. Usually I absolutely abhor queuing, but for a year’s worth of free food I was prepared to break that rule. So my lack of plans that weekend and lust for free food found me waking up at 6:45 on a Saturday to get there to join the queue. We arrived around 7:15 which was just in time as they had a list of people and at 7:30am it was full. 

After that they turfed us outside into the cold to wait for the store to open at 10am. Honestly this seemed a kind of cool way of doing it, had I known I hadn’t made it on the list I would have headed straight back home to bed. When they handed out the tickets I was the 55th person in line and the 44th person to buy an ice cream cake. By the time we got to ordering it was 10:45 so I invested about 4 hours in to the endeavour, but it really didn’t seem like that long and I had a lot of fun in the queue with my friends and making the video above.

This first store is located in the University neighbourhood of Hyehwa. There is only one reason I have been to Hyehwa before and that is to drink at one of my favourite cocktail bars, Mix & Malt.  The medium sized store, is set over two floors, and has a cool and relaxed vibe. In the next few months they will be opening more branches all over the country, including one in my neighbourhood of Itaewon (now open and right by exit 3), which is when my VIP Fan Deal set card will start paying dividends. The Itaewon location is set to be where Taco bell currently is and will open in December, and will also be running a special grand opening promotion.

On to the food. I decided to use my new Fan Deal set which includes either a cheeseburger or chicken strips, chips, a drink and an ice cream sundae. As I already planned on getting some burgers on top, I went with the chicken strips, plus everyone had gone on about how amazing they are. For burgers I opted for the Crispy Chicken Burger (4,900) Quarterpounder Bacon Cheese Burger (6,800). I’m greedy so I also ordered a portion of onion rings. As you can see it was one hell of a fast food feast. 

I found the beef burger to be very reminiscent of a Burger King Whopper, I found it very tasty at the time, but I was hella hungry after being in that queue for so long, with only a banana to tide me over. The chicken burger was also pretty decent, a very crispy coating and nicely spiced, could have done with a touch more mayo for my tastes, but a solid fast food burger. I had heard good things about the Onion Rings (2,400) through the grapevine but didn’t really care for them, maybe they weren’t freshly cooked but I probably wouldn’t get them again. I’m not really sure what I expected from DQ before going, I thought it might slightly better than the regular fast food places, but I found it to be pretty similar to Burger King.