Kim Jong Il: Let them eat pizza

Choson Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper based in Japan, reports that Supreme Leader and noted epicure Kim Jong Il has opened the first pizzeria in his famine-wracked country.   Kim’s interest in gourmet food and drink is long-standing — he’s Hennessy cognac’s biggest individual customer, for instance. The restaurant is the culmination of his decade-long investment ...

587737_090316_KimJongIl5.jpg
587737_090316_KimJongIl5.jpg


Choson Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper based in Japan, reports that Supreme Leader and noted epicure Kim Jong Il has opened the first pizzeria in his famine-wracked country.  

Kim’s interest in gourmet food and drink is long-standing — he’s Hennessy cognac’s biggest individual customer, for instance. The restaurant is the culmination of his decade-long investment in producing the perfect pies. In the 1990s, he hired an Italian pizza-maker to teach his staff the vital art of olive placement. And, after “trial and error” failed to bring the pizza up to snuff, he sent them to Italy last year.

Apparently the trip was a success: the restaurant now serves pasta and pizza made with ingredients flown in from Europe to North Korea’s elite. Though Kim allegedly “does not eat much, but enjoys picking at various kinds of food, as if just to taste” — an irony that’s got to be hard to stomach.  

Photo: KNS/AFP/Getty Images

Annie Lowrey is assistant editor at FP.

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