After hitting up the Vancouver International Auto Show last night, Susanne and I went for a stroll through downtown looking for a place to eat dinner. We weren’t all that hungry yet, so it resulted in a fair amount of aimless meandering. She mentioned that she wanted to hit up the new(ish) Korean supermarket — H-Mart — located at Seymour and Robson in downtown Vancouver, half a block from India Gate Restaurant.
There, we discovered all sorts of unique foods like dried fish, plenty of kimchi, and an assortment of soy pastes and tasty sauces. We didn’t end up buying anything from the market itself, but we did discover that there is a fast food court of sorts built right into the supermarket on the second floor. What we discovered was some pretty good value, plenty of grub, and a cafeteria-like dining experience.
The menu — thankfully with plenty of pictures — is displayed on a backlit board next to the cash register. It’s more or less self serve with a water cooler off on the side, a pot of beef rib broth (which was very tasty) next to the menu, and a smattering of chopsticks, spoons, napkins, and so forth on the counter. After ordering, you receive a number which shows up on the LCD screen (you can see it on the left-side of the photo) when your food is ready.
Here’s what I had. It was white rice with mixed vegetables, ground beef, and a raw egg served in a super hot clay bowl. Naturally, there was some Korean hot sauce mixed in there, so when you stirred it altogether, you had a nice, hot (both in terms of temperature and taste) meal. The best part was that it came with unlimited kimchi.
And here is what Susanne had. It was spicy beef noodle soup, again with unlimited kimchi. Surprisingly, the soup base wasn’t all that spicy. It tasted almost like Vietnamese pho. Susanne told me that it was very filling because they tossed in a lot of noodle. The metal bowl was deceptively deep.
Total bill for the two of us came to about $16 or $17. I’d say that’s pretty good value.
Nice pics of lunch! I have not eaten Korean in Vancouver yet, it would be interesting to taste it and compare it to the food in Korea.
Your dish is called “dol-sot bibimbap”…and that hot sauce is called “gochujang”. Your dish can be had for 2900w-4000w ($3-4) here in Seoul.
Yeah, it cost about twice as much here. I don’t even want to attempt to pronounce those words you wrote. :p
I tried one of these “restaurants in supermarkets” in Toronto. It was also a korean super market – perhaps it’s a trend? I don’t know. But the food was wonderful – I love kimchi, I eat it by the bowlful!
Hmm I never had a chance to taste some thing Korean..Hope we had some restaurants arround here..
I cannot picture what was at that intersection last time I drove by, I’ll have to check it out. What did it replace?
You know what, I have no idea. I used to work in the area and it was during the time that this building was being constructed, so to me, before there was H-Mart, there was a vacant lot. What was there before the vacant lot, I haven’t a clue.