Bibimbap is my default lunch/dinner/breakfast of choice. It’s about $3.50 for a an enormous bowl of rice with mixed vegetables, hot pepper paste and a fried egg, gently touched with sesame oil and seaweed. Like PB&J, it’s just one of those things that works, each flavor in perfect harmony with the others. I’ve payed a lot more money for food a lot clunkier than this. It’s a dish that makes you feel stupid for ever paying more than $3.50 for food.

So I was a little bit bummed when this showed up in the New York Times:

Excuse the weird grammar, the casual Korean and the phrase “customers of funerals”, it just flops. It’s a fine example of how Korea is generally over thinking it’s global efforts. This could not have been a cheap ad, so who forgot to run it by a native English-speaking copywriter? Also, why Bibimbap and not Samgyupsal? Why a dish of mixed rice and foreign ingredients and not, well, meat on a grill? Like a lot of Korean things, there plenty of head scratching moments in this ad.

Anyhow, if you can find it, go for it. There’s a Bibimbap place called Bap on 9th Avenue in between 55th and 54th street. It’s hardly authentic, but it is delicious.