Ansan : Its 삼각김밥 not お握り!

12th October 2012.
Ansan, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.

Onigiri is one of my favourite breakfast food and its highly versatile as well, it could double up as a snack or even as a packed meal. It is convenient, cheap and sometimes even tasty.

You can find them around South Korea as well and they seemed rather popular as snacks or even as meal as well but like “bento” in Korea, they have a Korean name for it and I think they don’t like it when packed meals are called “bento” instead of “dosirak 도시락” and similarly rice balls are known as “samgak gimbap 삼각김밥” or “jumeok gimbap 주먹밥”.

Just around our school, Babal specializes in samgak gimbap and rang myeon and it is a favourite of one of my friends who couldn’t take meat and eats light. On top of that the food here is pretty cheap!

I had the Tuna Mayonnaise Rice Ball (1500 KRW), a huge rice ball barely wrapped with a piece of seaweed. The rice ball was clearly handmade and it was very tasty. The mayonnaise gave it a nice sweet and tangy touch and tuna for the savoury bit. The seasoned rice was good by itself too.

If you prefer something more “Korean” and meaty, you could opt for the Bulgogi Rice Ball (2000 KRW), an equally big rice ball with sweet, yummy beef bulgogi embedded in it.

The two rice balls add together was actually quite filling. If there is not enough, you could have a bowl of Ramen (or Rang Myeon) too, it cost around 2500 KRW to 3500 KRW and the soup base seemed to be prepared in-house and it was quite rich.

Sometimes the rice balls were served in cups (the one above has roe in it), because they were rather big, you are actually provided with scissors to cut them up into manageable portions to eat. In short, decent rice balls (samgak gimbap not onigiri!) for an affordable price!

Babal
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