Fired-Up Pizza

Pizza offers an intuitive landing place for buldak, with mozzarella providing a built-in foil for its aggressive heat. At Hello Pizza in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif., the Buldak Pizza layers Korean sweet-and-spicy marinated chicken, mozzarella and chopped tomato with buldak sauce, then doubles down on dairy with a cheese-stuffed crust.

Other pizzerias are playing with the profile, too. Fat Tomato Pizza in Los Angeles offers a Buldak Spicy BBQ Chicken Pizza, while the now-closed Appas in New York took a particularly inventive approach with its Buldak Ramyun Pizza, using a buldak base and finishing the pie with ramen “crunchies.” That crunchy noodle treatment points to an intriguing next step: Operators can borrow not only buldak’s heat, but also the textures and rituals that helped make the ramen experience so culturally resonant.