The first time that I tasted korean food was in Bachetto in Mandaluyong, there was a booth that offers korean foods; well, the owner are also cute Korean; food that we try were the Korean Dumpling and my new found love Korean bread, which is very fantastic. Banchetto is a food event that happens every week in other places like forum in Mandaluyong, Shop-Wise in C5 Libis, and Megatent in Ortigas. One day walking along Magsaysay ave. to buy some groceries at SM Sta. Mesa/SM Centerpoint. Along the way, I saw a girl that gives flyers to people, promoting their stall; the said flyer got my attention because they are offering korean food. The name of the food stall is Flammable Topokki; located in SM Sta. Mesa / SM Centerpoint at the food-court, near supermarket entrance and ACE Hardware. Flammable Topokki offers their street korean foods; toppogi and odeck; can be compared to our street foods here in the Philippines like kwek-kwek, diced hotdogs, one-year old chick, fishball, chickenball, calamares, quail-eggs, banana-cue, and many more.
The first one I tried was the Toppoki. Toppoki is a very common food in korea; it can compared to spaghetti. Some of the ingredient of toppoki is rice cake, spicy red bean paste, and vegetable. The taste of it? well so good, not so spicy but with a twist of sweet, maybe because of the rice; but I love the sauce of topokki.
The next food that I tried is the odeng, fish cake soup in plain english; what I like about odeng is that it comes with a soup which is a bang-for-a-buck korean street food here in Philippines especially for public utility drivers who are on the go. The other thing that I am suprised about korean street food were the ingredients and the preparation, they are nutritious compare to Philippine street foods which are fried that you do not know where they get the oil or grease; sorry I am guilty eating those food, but after tasting those two korean street foods, I had another option when eating street food. The introductory price, toppoki at 20 pesos and odeng at nine pesos, bang-for-the-buck food right?
So if you are want to try affordable korean street food here in Manila, Flammable Toppoki is your choice located at SM Sta. Mesa/SM Centerpoint foodcourt, near supermarket entrance and ACE hardware.
