Stop #13: A Korean Standard = Magic

First off, this was a big week - I have finally crossed the street from the west side of 10th Avenue and over to the big encampment of trucks that line all four sides of a city block.  We are in the thick of it now!

My first stop was #1 Bento, which I actually thought was a Japanese food truck, due to its name.  However, I was wrong.  #1 Bento serves up Korean cuisine - everything from teryaki bentos to dumplings to grilled chicken.  Despite having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area and eating my weight (and very likely the weight of my immediate family and a few friends as well) in Japanese, Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese food, somehow Korean had never really made it onto my radar.

Well, that was about to change.  I asked the woman taking my order what she liked best.  After laughing at me, she said that Bi Bim Bap, a Korean standard, is her favorite thing.  So I ordered one with chicken.  When I arrived back at the office, I opened my container to find a mound of rice topped with little scoops of various ingredients - chicken, bean sprouts, steamed spinach, julienned zucchini and carrots and an unidentified pickled root vegetable (probably daikon?)  Everything was topped with an egg (and not because we are in Portland - but because that is what actually belongs there.)  The meal was garnished with a sprinkling of seaweed, with a side of kimchi and of hot sauce.

It was all laid out beautifully, with each individual vegetable holding its own space in the container.  So I started to try each one on its own, making my way around the arrangement.   Then I suddenly thought to myself  "I bet there is a totally a 'right' (ie traditional) way to eat this."  Thank god for Wikipedia!  After a quick search, I discovered that, while each ingredient is placed onto the "plate" separately, the eater is supposed to mix everything together and enjoy.  Which I promptly did, and with fantastic results! Everything retained its great flavor while gaining a geschtalt effect of being more than the sum of its parts.  The only thing was that I wished the egg hadn't been so fully cooked so I could have mixed it in more effectively, but I imagine that was smart business and health practice on their part (raw-ish egg = danger!)  Kimchi is not really my thing and I found theirs a little soggy, but the Bi Bim Bap is still haunting me with its awesomeness.

Pretty cool to be introduced to a whole new dish about which I had no real idea, and to know that it is a meal that has a long tradition as a staple of an entire country.

Git it!

#1 Bento: 
Bi Bim Bap with Chicken: $6.50 (+tip!)
-Cash Only