Seoul on Wheels: Loosen your jaw before eating

Seoul on Wheels has the makings of a brilliant business. Nappy-headed dot-com refugee Julia Yoon and her shadow prep crew cruise around SOMA selling Korean box lunches out of their food van. The menu will make any Korean food nut drool: rice bowls with your choice of meat toppings like gal bee, bool go gee. Or you can skip the flesh and get kimchee fried rice or a big plate of chap chae noodles. Half the fun is figuring out where the bus will be that day by checking the schedule on the Website. It’s like tracking the ice cream man. Or Santa Claus.

It’s gimmicky, smart and fun until you take a bite. The food looks delicious, but so does lacquered sushi. The chap chae is slimy and it tastes like my mom’s lo mein. The rice is crunchy like it was cooked the night before and then microwaved. Here comes the sad part: you get a mound of what seems like beautiful Korean gal bee, but my batch was on the fast track to becoming jerky. By the time I was done, my jaw was sore from chewing so much tendon.

I wanted to fall in love with Seoul on Wheels. Hints of a long-term romance were there: funky name, meat lover’s menu, Korean woman with an afro. But it’s cruel to tempt someone with fobby excellence, only to hand them a plate of yesterday’s lunch meat.

One thing to note: It seems The Man has whittled down the van's route due to licensing issues. You can get live updates on its lunchtime whereabouts on its Super Big Ass Twitter Page.

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