Midtown Lunch

After reading Chris’ early word on Korilla BBQ, I made a mental note to check it out next time it came to my nabe. When I read on the Twitter Tracker that they’d be on 46th and 7th the other day, I took the opportunity to hit them up for lunch.

Arriving at 1:21pm and there was already a crowd. Since I invested the time walking over I decided to just wait it out. The truck operators were good about handing out menus to the waiting customers so everyone would be prepared with their orders when they reached the window. It took 20 minutes from when I got in line until I had my meal in hand, but considering there were at least 20 people in front of me when I arrived, that means they were moving through customers fairly quickly for food that’s assembled to order. While waiting I noticed the folks from the TGI Fridays were handing out “buy one entree get one free” coupons. (I wonder if they had a hand in Korilla eventually getting shut down by the cops later this afternoon…)

After reading the comments on Chris’ post I decided to go for the Chosun bowl, a choose your own protein rice bowl with up to 7 vegetables and kimchis. I went for the spicy pork and I couldn’t resist trying the kimchi/bacon fried rice. Then I added red kimchi, cucumber kimchi, red radish, shiitake mushroom, spinach, Korean squash, and red leaf lettuce with both Korilla sauce and house hot sauce (though the menu says choose between the sauces, the guy had no problem giving me a little of both).

Since I added the bacon and kimchi fried rice which costs a dollar extra my meal came to $9, a little close to the upper reaches of the midtown lunch budget for my liking, but you do get a serious amount of food. For someone with a light to moderate appetite this would be more than satisfying–you might even be able to break it into a lunch and snack. The selection of vegetables was fun, it was sort of like having a Korean boxed bbq lunch with banchan, though the Korean squash was salty even for me (and I usually say, yes, please to extra sodium).

I ordered pretty much everything that was labeled “spicy” on the menu (the pork, red kimchi, cucumber kimchi and house hot sauce) but none of them had very much heat. They were pleasant and flavorful, but if you’re looking for a spicy fix you won’t find it here. On the other hand, if you’re scared by the spicy labels, fear not. Chris noted that “the Korilla BBQ crew has promised to bare their teeth and amplify the level of heat in the future.” I hope so.

Sadly Korilla is parked up at Columbia today, but it should only be a matter of time before their back in our hood. Check the Twitter Tracker or their Twitter account for locations. Speaking of location, Korilla has been taking votes on where they should go for lunch, you can keep tabs on the voting and cast the vote for your area here.

Related:
A First Look at Korilla BBQ, Back Today on Lex