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Reviews
With food trucks (or Lunch Wagons) being all the craze the past few years, no other truck has gained as much popularity as the Korean taco truck. That’s right, a fusion between Korean food and Mexican tacos, and one of those ultra popular Korean taco trucks is now in Hawaii! This mobile street food truck, called the Gogi Korean Taco Truck, was tracked down to Kapiolani Blvd, and I got right in line to see what the craze was all about!
The menu is rather simple. There are the traditional tacos and burritos, which you can order with a variety of different Korean influenced flavors. In addition, they also have several unique menu items such as a Korean quesadilla, hot dog, and sliders. Since this truck can be on the go, my girlfriend and I decided to get as many items that we can to try variety of what they have to offer.
Since the craze was all about the tacos, I decided to get three types of tacos, which included spicy pork, short rib (or kalbi), and chicken, all costing $2 each.
The tacos are actually very small. The tortilla is not much larger than your normal beverage coaster. The meat is placed onto the tortilla and is sprinkled with some cabbage and lettuce, that’s it, pretty simple huh? But how does it taste?
I have to say that of the three meats, my favorite was the spicy pork. The meat wasn’t too spicy, but it definitely gave the taco much more flavor since there isn’t any sauce on the taco. The pork was decently tender and had a nice mild spicy flavor to it. The short rib was a bit of a disappointment as I was expecting a kalbi flavored short rib, but the meat lacked taste and was very bland. In addition, the meat was not that tender and was a bit dry.
The chicken taco had a bit more flavor than the short rib, but fell short of the spicy pork. Still, the chicken was tender, was not dry, and probably had the most meat on the taco. Of course, this is relative speaking, since the tortilla is so small.
Overall, I was unfortunately disappointed with the Korean tacos. It lacked a lot of taste, the meat could have been more seasoned, and perhaps some sauce on the tacos would have helped. And at $2 per taco, this was a bit on the steep side.
My girlfriend had the tofu BiBim burrito, and she immediately told me that it was very bland. One look at the burrito, and I could tell it was bland. What they advertised was kimchee fried rice, choy sum, green onions, mexi cheese, and fried egg. As you can see from the picture, the kimchee fried rice looks like very mildly seasoned rice with almost no choy sum, green onions, or cheese. The rice was actually almost flavorless, and there was some tofu as well. I have to say, this was probably the biggest disappointment on the menu, and for $6, a huge rip-off.
We also ordered the creamy kimchee fries for $4. I was expecting a burst of flavor with this snack, but unfortunately I was also left disappointed. There was barely a scoop of their creamy kimchee sauce, and had a small sprinkle of garlic, green onions, and what looked like parmesan cheese. They also didn’t give enough fries to make it worth the $4, and to top it off, the creamy kimchee topping didn’t even really have a kimchee flavor to it. Sad, because I was really looking forward to this dish.
But enough with the bad news, the next dish redeemed the entire experience, well almost. You see, I had ordered their Gogi Dog v2.0 ($6), paid for it with all the other items, and was waiting for our order. Though there were a few other people ordering and waiting for their food, they did not bag all our food together. Instead they started giving out our food little by little and at different times, which was very confusing. We had to make sure that we accounted for all of our items, and noticed that we didn’t get the Gogi Dog. Thinking that they were going to give us the last item when it came out, we noticed that everyone else were getting their items and they all ordered after us. I finally asked them where our Gogi Dog was, and they basically forgot to put in the order. So we had to stand there another 5 minutes so that they could make the Gogi Dog, great…
Fortunately, the Gogi Dog was a splendid item. and the taste almost made me forget about the so-so tacos, the bland burrito and fries, and the so-so service. Their Gogi Dog v2.0 is basically a large beef hot dog (think Costco size), topped with spicy pork, mexi cheese, green onions, and over-easy egg, ketchup, kewpie mayo, and furikake. Sounds hefty right? Well, it was quite possibly the best combination of items I’ve ever had on a hot dog. OK, I know it kind of sounds gross with all those items, and I thought the same but still wanted to try it when I saw it on the menu, but believe me, this dog is delicious!!!
If the hot dog wasn’t enough meat, the spicy pork definitely made it that much more meatier, and the over-easy egg really put it over the top! The mayo and ketchup were also excellent sauces that complimented the hot dog very well, and the furikake with green onions were excellent toppers. This dog was $6, but it was probably one of the best dogs I ever had.
Does this hot dog make up for all the other par or sub-par attributes of this street truck? I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say yes, since it could have been a busy day, or I may have had different workers, since I heard more great things about this place than bad. Which is why I would still encourage people to at least give this place a shot. I ended up only really liking the Gogi Dog and the spicy pork taco, while the rest were too bland for me.
So the next time you see this mobile street truck, stop them and make sure you get the Gogi Dog v2.0!!!
