Koffee & Kpop

Summer intensive camp at my hagwon finished up last month so I thought I’d share the lunches we were served. If you follow my instagram, you have already seen these photos as I posted them each day.

Most lunches were dosirak (도시락), or Korean-style lunchboxes. They include rice, soup, banchan (반찬, side dishes), and a protein of some type. We did have a few special lunches, including a very special lunch on the last day of camp, which culminated in a trip to a kids’ cafe.

With one exception when the students got pizza and teachers got a dosirak, students and teachers got the same lunches.

Day One was a pretty stereotypical dosirak. As usual, it had rice, miyeokguk (미역국, seaweed soup), salad, samgyeopsal (삼겹살, pork belly), and side dishes of kimchi, quail eggs, peanuts, dipping sauce for the pork belly, and some kind of green vegetable. Oh, and lots of sesame seeds on all the side dishes.

Day Two was a fusion dosirak. While it still had rice, kimchi and soup were missing. Instead, there was some bulgogi (불고기, grilled meat), a bulgogi burger, some jello with pineapple pieces inside, a few chicken nuggets with honey mustard dipping sauce, fish cake (어묵), rolled omelette (계란말이), two pieces of kimbap, and two sweet songpyeong (송편) for dessert.

Day Three was a typical dosirak with rice, salad, two small meat patties, kimchi, quail eggs, myeolchi bokkeum (멸치볶음, stir-fried anchovies), peanuts, some kind of vegetable, two tater tots, and some tonkatsu pieces (called “donkkaseu” 돈까스 in Korean) with dipping sauce.

Day Four was a special lunch. It included a few chicken nuggets with honey mustard dipping sauce, a potato smiley face, a mini corn dog with ketchup and sugar, mini ham and cheese sandwich rolls, spam kimbap, two rice and seaweed balls with sausage, a piece of sausage with a quail egg, and yubuchobap (유부초밥, fried tofu skin stuffed with rice and diced vegetables). There were also two pieces of MyChew chewy candy for dessert.

Day Five was another typical dosirak which included rice, white kimchi (a more mild kimchi), rolled omelette, sliced potato and crab, marinated meat (pork, I’m assuming), some sort of sticky dried fish, a mini sausage, two mini corn dogs, a piece of battered and fried jumbo shrimp, and some fresh fruit.

Day Six was another adorable lunch. It consisted of two pieces of yubuchobap, two chicken nuggets with honey mustard dipping sauce, a mini corn dog embossed with a smiley face, and the pièce de résistance–molded rice balls with Sanrio characters (My Melody, Cinnamoroll, and Pompompurin) on top made with edible ingredients like spam, cheese, ketchup, and seaweed. It was really great for the kids, but not very filling for the adults.

Day Seven was another stereotypical dosirak with rice, seaweed soup, salad, fish cake, stir-fried anchovies, quail eggs, kimchi, black beans, burdock root, and one of my least favorite foods in the world: octopus. Even the smell of octopus is off-putting for me so I didn’t really eat much this day.

Day Eight had rice, seaweed soup, salad, pork belly, peanuts, radish, kimchi, quail eggs, and spam.

Day Nine had rice, bulgogi, a bulgogi burger, jello with pineapple pieces inside, an egg-battered piece of meat with a dollop of ketchup, rolled omelette, two mini sausages, stir-fried anchovies, two mini chicken nuggets and two pieces of marinated chicken.

Day Ten gave us rice with a piece of spam, bulgogi, quail eggs, a mini corn dog, jajang sauced (자장, a kind of black bean sauce that is popular in Korean Chinese fusion dishes, especially with noodles) fish cake, radish, stir-fried anchovies, a few chicken nuggets with honey mustard dipping sauce, and some pieces of fresh fruit.

Day Eleven was another cute lunchbox for the kids featuring orange chicken, tater tots, a mini ham and cheese spiral sandwich, and four pieces of molded rice balls with characters on top. This time we had two My Melody characters, one octopus made with a cut mini sausage, and a baby shark. Yes, that Baby Shark. Like the previous special lunches, the decorations on the molded rice balls were made with edible decorations like strips of seaweed and cheese and dollops of ketchup and honey mustard.

Day Twelve is another traditional dosirak featuring rice, pork belly, two chicken nuggets, a piece of battered meat, kimchi, spam pieces and onion, quail eggs, peanuts, some mashed sweet potato salad, radish, two tater tots, a few pieces of fried pork with sweet and sour sauce, known as tangsuyuk (탕수육) in Korean.

Day Thirteen had pasta! It had spaghetti noodles and rotini AND penne with tomato sauce, potato and fish cake soup, two chicken nuggets, bulgogi, rolled omelette, rice, mango jelly, mini sausage and tteokbokki (떡볶이, or rice cake), tofu and kimchi.

Day Fourteen had rice, japchae (잡채, or stir-fried glass noodles and sliced vegetables), pork belly, some sweet sticky dried fish (honestly I don’t know what this is even though it’s fairly common in school lunches), a mash of tofu and broccoli, battered and fried meat patties, radish, fresh fruit, and some jajang-sauced meat and fish cake.

Day Fifteen was another cute lunchbox featuring two pieces of molded rice with a character made with yellow cheese and another character made with a piece of Spam and some white cheese. (Are these supposed to be Pokemon?) There was also a mini sausage and piece of tteokbokki, as well as a mini chicken drumstick.

Day Sixteen was a special lunch of a chicken burger and french fries from the Korean chain Mom’s Touch. (The sandwich is actually upside-down in this picture, so you’re looking at the bottom bun.)

Day Seventeen was a banchan-heavy dosirak featuring rice, seaweed soup, spicy pork belly, bulgogi, kimchi, macaroni and corn, and four additional banchan: quail eggs, spam and kimchi, burdock root, and two pieces of what I believe was fish cake.

Day Eighteen was our last cute lunch. It featured a mini corndog, two songpyeong for dessert, some chicken nuggets with honey mustard dipping sauce and a potato face with a ketchup smile, some spam kimbap, two rice and seaweed balls with sausage, two ham and cheese swirl pinwheels, a mini sausage and quail egg, and a few pieces of yubuchobap.

Day Nineteen was our last dosirak of camp. It featured rice with a piece of crab, some crunchy marinated chicken, radish, two pieces of meat with a kind of teriyaki drizzle, rolled omelette, fish cake, fresh fruit, and a hashbrown.

Day Twenty the lunch was at Outback Steakhouse. The spread you see here was shared between four students. There was shrimp pasta, steak, a baked potato, rice, salad, chicken strips, brown bread, and lemonade.

Summer camp was a blast and I’m happy that some of the students I taught went on to be in my regular classes this semester. My favorite lunch was probably day nineteen, as the marinated chicken was really good, but I also loved lunch day fourteen, as japchae is one of my favorite Korean foods.

Did any lunch stand out to you?