#879: Song Hak Rice Topokki Bowl

While at the KS Mart in Lynnwood, Washington, I saw this and had to give it a try. Wasn’t sure what (if any) noodles would be within, although I know one thing: topokki (or ttebokki) are really neat – they’re like enormous noodle chunks. Korean food is awesome stuff. Here’s what Wikipedia says about how it arrived in its current form:

Following the Korean War a new type of tteokbokki became very popular. While the older version was a savory dish, this latter type was much spicier, and quickly became more popular than the older traditional dish. In addition to traditional ingredients, this tteokbokki used gochujang, a fermented, spicy paste made from chilli peppers, along with fish cakes. Other ingredients added to tteokbokki include boiled eggs, pan-fried mandu (Korean dumplings), sausages, ramyeon (which then becomes rabokki/labokki 라볶이), a variety of fried vegetables, and cheese. These days, many kinds of tteokbokki are popular such as seafood tteokbokki(해물 떡볶이) or rice tteokbokki(쌀떡볶이). Flour tteokbokki was popular in early days, but rice tteokbokki is more popular these days.

Sindang-dong in Seoul, where tteokbokki was first sold, is still very famous for the dish and treated as the mekkah of tteokbokki. Since Tteokbokki has become one of the most popular dishes, one will easily find a place to enjoy eating Tteokbokki in Korea.

Check out the full Wikipedia article here. Now, let’s open this thing up!

Here’s the importer’s sticker (click to enlarge). Ethyl alcohol? Yep – you definitely smell it when its cooking in the microwave.

Here are the side panels (click to enlarge). The sticker was hard to remove – my apologies.

Hey! A new included fork for the Included Forks page!

Here’s the topokki! Like big trippy noodle pieces.

Here’s the spicy sauce!

Hey what is this? I’m taking a shot in the dark here, but I think what you do is open it and pour water into it up to the line. This one’s going to be a real crap-shoot as far as figuring out how it is prepared, but here’s my guess: empty everything into the bowl as well as 50ml of water. Microwave for 2 1/2 minutes. Hope for good results…

Finished. I decided to pair it with some of the kimchi I also got at KS Mart in Lynnwood, Washington. I know, it’s a little greenish still – it was very fresh and it’s not completely ripe yet… I have trouble resisting the kimchi. Speaking of kimchi, my 7 year old boy HATES the stuff. But he’s awesome so here’s a link to his blog, Andy’s LEGO Stuff. So the stuff on the right – that’s the topokki. The topokki is chewy and hearty and enjoyable! The flavor is wonderful – spicy like gochujang and has just the right spices and stuff; kind of reminds me of canned ravioli sauce but spicy and a ton better. This should replace anything remotely like Spaghetti-O’s on your shelf if you can find it! This is some tasty and really spicy stuff! Yeeow! 5.0 out of 5.0 stars – pure tasty awesomeness in a very simple form.n UPC bar code 8803560010692 .

You know, every day that I realize that there hasn’t been a huge explosion of Korean and Indonesian restaurants in this country it saddens me a little more. I’m so lucky to live in an area that has a rich ethnic population and a lot of Asian groceries!

This guy’s gotta be happy going to school there! Wow!

Where To Get It: Pal-Do World

So another Lynnwood-area Korean supermarket is Pal-Do World…

Pal-Do World

17424 Highway 99

Lynnwood, WA 98037-9243

(425) 742-2237

This one’s much like H Mart – it has a main gfocery area and small satellite stores. 99 Ranch is this way too, but less of a Korean-based store.

So quite a few interesting places in here – among them a bank, an AT&T store a place called ‘Chicky Pub’ where you could get a beer and some fried chicken, and a couple other little things.

A pretty decent instant noodle bowl and package selection here. One thing I liked was seeing some products that I’d only seen in 5 packs in singles, so I could try them without having to repeat eat.

Lots of 5 packs and bowls of things…

A nice array of foreign beverages. We went for the pear juice which will be paired with something fizzy later this evening.

Here’s what I came home with and what will be reviewed in the future. Pal-Do world offers some interesting stuff.

Where To Get It: H Mart with UPDATE!!!

Holy moly freakin god look at the size of that place. It’s an enormous Korean grocery much like Paldo World in Lynnwood – and guess what – this place iis in Lynnwood too…

3301 184th Street Southwest
Lynnwood, WA 98037-4797
(425) 776-0858

One thing to note real quick – if you go to http://www.hmart.com you won’t find the store in the list of locations. Why? I haven’t got a clue. But oh it is indeed at this address you can be sure of that!

It’s an interesting concept. It’s like the size of a Walmart. You walk in and there’s a bunch of little stores surrounding the grocery store. So for example, I saw a little video store and a patisserie in there. We Didn’t go check everything out but I think there’s probably a gift shop type of place too. All in all very interesting and lots of cool stuff. In the grocery store there was a lot of different things you could sample. Had some kimchi and tuna over rice concoction that was quite good.

There was a very good selection off instant noodles to get there so got some new stuff to review!

I was drooling a bit at all of the curry they had on one aisle – this is just a small section of the boxed stuff.

Canned? CANNED? Hmmm must be tried!

This stuff was really really really good – oh hell yes. Going to have to return very soon!

UPDATE!!! So return we did two days later. Here’s further down the curry aisle – tons and tons of asian curries – lots of awesome stuff!

They had case options on the Sriracha! Chuggable stuff!

37.5 pounds of pure pain to burn your esophagus! Yeah!

Finally, the pictures I wanted people to see to begin with – the noodles. They have a great selection here of some out of the way stuff. I liked the fact that they had lots of Mama brand items I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Lots of bowl noodles to appeal to the discerning taste buds!

The long and short of it is that I thought this place was really cool – lots of neat stuff and very large. Worth the trip. Not too far if you live in the Puget Sound area as it’s in Lynnwood which is just halfway between Seattle and Everett.

Thanks go to Paul Spehar for clueing me in about this place – never in a million years would I have found it.