School Food Blooming Roll

I usually go here when I am in the area and craving ddukbokki. I usually get their dduksoon combo which comes with soondae (korean sausage), fried dumpling, boiled egg, and of course ddukbokki!
Its usually good but sometimes I don’t know why but tastes bad. The combo is little bit spicy so if you don’t like something too spicy, then get the mekadduk which is carbonara ddukbokki with ddukbokki sause mixed.
The food is good overall but I really wish if they can lower the a.c. sometimes.

Well. I am living in San Diego and got to LA a few days ago. I found a place where sells a tteokbboki and found someone posted this place and gave a decent rate for the place, so I decided to come eat here. However, no one at the counter greeted me although it seemed slow. I went up to a person at the counter and told him a table for one. The price seemed kind of expensive, but it was understandable because It is LA. The food was also okay as Korean street food in the US. However, I hope the emoloyees here be more outgoing. They never asked me of the check and water unless I called a server. I just sat at a table stupidly. Is it part of the LA culture?

The spicey rice cakes were good. The black pudding was decent. I liked the giant bottles of beer. The atmosphere was nice but didn’t connect with the name of the place at all. The bathroom was very nice.

Nothing special.
The food was okay. Because they don’t specialize in a particular dish (you could argue that their special dish is kimbap, but…), their dishes aren’t amazing or different, to say the least.
I went with a couple friends. It wasn’t busy because it was close to closing time. We ordered tonkatsu, ttukboki, kimbap and bacon, omelette rice. The dishes were typical Korean comfort food. Good, filling, but nothing new or different.
The ttukboki, to be honest, was terrible. It was 70% soup and 30% ttuk (rice cake) and odang (fish cake).
The tonkatsu wasn’t much; the sauce ruined the dish.
The kimbap and bacon, omelette rice were pretty good.
I wouldn’t go there again, but I understand the restaurants appeal.

In the past, when I’d come here time to time, I thought their ddukk in their ddukbbokki was a little too old and their food in general were either really sweet or salty. When I visited this time, they improved a lot.
I ordered …
1. Teriyaki beef roll ($ 7.99): it just tasted like regular kimbap with bulgogi. It wasn’t the best, but it was good.
2. Ddukbbokki with ramen ($ 9.99): the dduk wasn’t as old and soggy as it used to be from the past. It was pretty good actually! It wasn’t too spicy or too bland. It was decent.
I was kind of eh about coming here at first, but I’m glad I gave this place another chance because they definitely improved on their food quality!

Worst service ever!!! Don’t even bother wasting your time and money here! There are plenty of other good places for better ttuk bbok kki and gimbop in ktown.

Served rotten dduk! Was a bluish discoloration seeped inside the dduk, but they explained it as «burnt». Umm, last i checked, things don’t turn blue if it’s burnt. Server was rude, saying we were ridiculous! Never coming to this place again, after being a customer for several years!

If I could give negative stars for this review I would.
1. Horrible service. The server doesn’t respond when you ask for something.
2. Food:
Tuna risotto: They served the dish with an overload of sauce poured over the dish. When we told them that it was too salty, the server asked if we want some more white rice. We were baffled, and asked them to remake it. They told us that they have to go buy more cheese downstairs at the market.
Ddukbokki: (spicy rice cake) My friend was eating it and found a suspicious looking rice cake with black/​blue marks on it. We asked the server about it, and when he took it to the back, we saw servers bickering while looking at our table. He brought it back saying that it’s probably burnt, and that it can’t possibly be spoiled.
What ruined our day more was that they were looking at us as if we were being picky with our food, and that they couldn’t even apologize for their inadequately prepared food.
Never returning here again.

Order the combination roll and duk soon ee! The combo roll has everything from squid ink, pork belly, kimchi, masago roe, tuna, and anchovy. The Duk Sonee has soondae, dukbokki and dumplings! We were so full after eating all this.
They give you a broth with dried fishcake and scallions inside to help wash down the food!

I usually come here and get the same stuff (carbonara dukboogi & rolls). I tried the special roll 1. It came with three different types of rolls (tuna, anchovy, & kimchi). Few of my favorite rolls! It’s getting hot these days so I decided to try their nengmyun (cold noodles). I’m very indecisive with food and was glad they had the nengmyun with broth or no broth (which is spicy nengmyun). When it came out, it had no broth. I asked the waitress for extra broth. & still literally got none. The waitress also appeared unprofessional, really had this unwelcoming vibe. No one came to check up on our table.

This is a nice place to go to for lunch if you don’t want something too heavy. We ordered some rolls and our orders came with some light soup. I loved the roll with squid ink. Two orders for two people was sufficient for us as we didn’t want to eat too much. Parking is not too difficult as there is a parking garage in the complex.

I used to like this place as i like spicy food and their rolls. However, they are so uncenatary. The water pitcher was so dirty that when I wiped what look like dirt, black stained dirt literally came off it. When I asked the server about it, she said sorry and acted as if it was okay to serve water in such dirty pitcher. We ended up ordering a bottle water.

Surprised that this place has such bad reviews.
We’re definitely coming back if we’re in the area (which isn’t often but I love H mart and would gladly plan a trip to K-​town around H mart and School Food!)
Obviously this place isn’t your straight up Korean restaurant — and if you came here looking for that you’re in the wrong place. Plus, you’re in K-​town, there are lots of better options! But if you’re looking for satisfying Korean snack food — you’ve come to the right place!
Fantastic Ddukbokki, super spicy but flavorful, we couldn’t stop even though our mouths were on fire
Decent Kimbap and pretty good Kimchi Chigae. And the portions were huge so we wound up taking about half of the food back :)
Couple of drawbacks though: It was a teeny bit expensive for what it was, and our server insisted on speaking in Korean to us — I’m not Korean and it’s such a turn off when servers ignore you when you speak in English. Boo!

Hmm… I’m not sure why this place gets 3 stars.
I’ve been coming to School Food restaurant for many years now. They are popular for their cute interior décor, and picture perfect food dishes. Their price range is definitely on the expensive side, considering this type of Korean «street-​food» is usually found to be cheap.
On my most recent visit here, I ordered the following items:
Spam Roll 2: This is a must-​order whenever I eat at this restaurant. These cute bite-​sized rolls come with spam and the special school food sauce. Then the outside is rolled with egg and mozzarella cheese. This roll is same as Spam Roll 1, but with the egg and cheese. The extra dollar is worth it!
Combination Tok-​su-​née: It comes with toppoki, fried dumplings, and soon dae. The toppoki is pretty spicy, but really yummy. The eggs, dumplings and soon dae balance out the spiciness. I’m not a big fan of soon-​dae, but think of it as kind of like a Korean style sausage? I like this combo because you get to taste a variety of things.
O-​deng tang: This is a big bowl of assorted fish cakes soup. It is served hot, and a little bit spicy because of the jalapenos. If you just want the soup, pass on ordering this dish because they give you a complimentary soup when you dine here (without the fish cakes, and a lot smaller portion).
Overall, I’m a fan of School Food. I do randomly crave to eat here, and the food is consistent. The service got actually better, too. The cool thing about this restaurant is that even though they don’t offer many different TYPES of food, they offer a different flavor of each kind. If that makes sense haha. I would recommend.

I wanted to like this place i really did.
I ordered the spam with egg rice roll and the spicy carbonara ddukbokki.
The spam egg rice roll was meh. it was just there. Nothing special. I hated that had small green onions on the inside. Had i known i would of requested no onions. It tasted like generic food stall spam rice roll. I love spam. I think it might of been low sodium spam too!
The ddukbokki was way too spicy. I love korean food but that spicy level was too much. And the huge onions were too much. not much bacon on it. The rice cake was nice and soft but the dish was not that great on multiple levels. Maybe it it had NO Onions and the spicy level was half i would of enjoyed it even considering the bacon was almost non existent.
The food was like a dull 1970’s photo where the colors are desaturated and the image is a little blurry. Yeah its nostalgic but its just not there when you look at it right now. Bland.
The place looks great though. Nice and clean. The free soup was nice.
Not sure if i would give this place another try. Too many other great Ktown locations to try.

This place was so hard to find… literally spent 40 mins walking around the plaza looking for it. There’s no big lit sign like Daiso, there’s a small lit up box hanging outside the door, looks like a Chinese take out box. That’s school food’s sign. If you’re on the first floor by Tom n Tom’s just look up, it’s on the 3^rd floor.
We got the tok-​Su-​née combo and 3 rolls: special roll #1, spam roll #2, and a BBQ pork roll. We died. Completely underestimated the portion. no wonder the waitress kind of gave us a bewildered look when we finished ordering. All this turned out to be around $ 50. It’s around $ 9 – 10 a roll and the tok-​su-​née was around $ 13. Pricing was on the more expensive side considering what you’re getting. Lots of rice, seaweed, not a lot of ingredients… this place must make bank for what they serve and how much they charge for it.
Combination tok-​Su-​née was good. It came with soondae, fried dumplings, broiled egg, and the spicy rice cake. It is on the spicier side but after a awhile it gets really sweet. The soondae was really good.
The rolls were nothing too special, lots of rice. The spam roll was one of my favorites since it was wrapped in egg. Special roll and BBQ pork came in 21 pieces and 14 for the spam roll. They’re small pieces but they add up!
Cute concept.
Mediocre food.
Decent service.
Expect to spent around $ 15 – 20 a person if you’re trying to get decently full!

They fill my spam kimbab crave so that’s a plus in my book. Good service and prompt. Wasn’t a huge fan of their ddukbokki but their bibim naemgmyun was amazing and refreshing! Recommend the spam roll II

I was always meaning to try this place out and I’m glad I did! It’s such a cute concept with their dishes themed after school lunches in Korea. However the pricing wasn’t too amazing for the simple types of dishes made. We ordered tteokbokki and the tuna kimbap. They were really delicious. 3 people shared the tteokbokki and used the spicy sauce to dip the kimbap in. Seriously the best thing to do!
It’s also located at the top of MaDang plaza which has a lot of different stores and restaurants to check out and walk off the food you consumed (Daiso, Sul-​Bing, CGV theatre, Paris Baguette etc).
It also has free 2 hour parking if you get it validated which is considered amazing in LA standards. Definitely a «try once» type of restaurant since I can make tteokbokki and kimbap at home haha.

Lunch on Monday, 9÷21÷15 (first time visiting)
They’re located on the 3^rd floor of the MaDang Plaza. It wasn’t busy when we arrived on a week day for lunch. Service was slow though with only two staff members. The décor is cute with a large mirror and chandelier in one area. There’s a button on the table to call for service but I’m not sure if it actually works.
I shared an order of the teriyaki beef roll and a cold noodle soup with my co-​worker. Apparently I should I have tried the spam roll instead although the teriyaki roll wasn’t too bad. It was just a bit on the dry side. The cold noodle soup was on the sweeter side but I didn’t mind.
This place has a wide selection of foods but there were too many for me to try so I’ll be back to order other items. So far, the taste of the foods isn’t something extraordinary where I’m craving it and would like to be back soon. It wasn’t bad but just simple. It’s a cute place to relax and enjoy a simple meal.

In Korea, there are snack shops called «boon shik jib» (meaning snack shops) and this place takes its inspiration from there
Came here for a quick dinner right before a movie and got a kimbab, odeng soup (fish cake soup), and neng myun (korean cold noodle).
The kimbab tasted very good and the fish cake soup had a nice spicy kick to it (which is unusual) and I liked it!
The neng myun was not good at all. The noodles were way overcooked so it was mushy.
Come for the kimbab!