Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Bibigo Kitchen brings Korean eats to the mall

Hot stone bulgogi bibimbap is far better than the food court

Hot stone bowl of seaweed rice, mixed vegetables, bulgogi beef, and a sous vide egg
Hot stone bowl of seaweed rice, mixed vegetables, bulgogi beef, and a sous vide egg

There’s an aisle on the ground level of the B parking lot on the south side of Fashion Valley mall, where two arrows painted on the asphalt point away from the exit. Problem is, you have to disobey the arrows to leave the parking lot, because this is the only way out. It only took me two rounds of driving all the aisles to figure that out, like a lab rat in a maze.

Place

Bibigo Kitchen Fashion Valley

7007 Friars Rd #357B, San Diego

That pretty well illustrates my mistrust of malls. I grew up in them, of course. For a while I even had the top score on this old stand-up video game Space Harrier, in the arcade at the Plaza Camino Real mall (I guess they call it the Shoppes of Carlsbad now). Friday nights were spent cruising with my friends, going from the arcade to the food court to the movie theater, pretty much the whole Stranger Things loop. We enjoyed it, but really we went back week after week because it was the only place our parents would willingly drop us off for a few hours. I guess they thought its overt retail overtures marked it a safe zone for preteens. Whatever their reasoning, it was the nearest glimpse we suburban kids got to urban life.

Roasted free range chicken breast with sesame noodles and broccolini

So I avoid malls as an adult, because they remind me of an awkward time I was quarantined from the great wide world. And yet, here I found myself, stuck in this parking lot at Fashion Valley, because there was this restaurant I wanted to try.

Sponsored
Sponsored

It’s not like the old days, when mall food solely consisted of garishly cheap reheats along the lines of Sbarro and Hot Dog on a Stick. Lately, there’s credible food to be found in malls. Good enough that one might go to the mall to eat, and maybe do some shopping after, rather than the other way around.

Steamed mandu dumplings, filled with beef, carrot, and onion meatballs

What drew me to Fashion Valley was Bibigo Kitchen, part of a self-described Korean Cuisine Brand, that “takes 5000 years of delicious Korean cuisine and updates it for today’s modern, non-stop lifestyles.” That marketing copy did not lure me to the restaurant. I was more curious to see what it’s like having Korean dining carve out a spot in such a mainstream American locale. The last time I went to a mall seeking food was to check out the UTC Westfield location of Din Tai Fung, part of the restaurant chain that made xiao long bao soup dumplings world famous. But Chinese food has been all over America for a hundred years.

Korean food less so. That said, Bibigo is a dominant global food force in its own right (also with a presence at the UTC mall). It markets food to grocery stores as well as restaurants in global capitals London and Beijing. And it’s likewise spreading its reach throughout Southern California. It even has its own trademark dumplings: savory steamed Mandu dumplings ($6) filled with beef meatballs (or vegetables). It’s not xiao long bao, but it’ll do.

An open kitchen and stylish fast casual location at Fashion Valley mall

Found at a southern entrance to Fashion Valley, the restaurant feels sleek and modern, with high ceilings, plenty of polished wood, and a partially open kitchen. It sits at the upper strata of fast casual; you order at a counter and take a table flag, but you may order from a wide selection of teas, plus beer, wine, and soju and makgeolli cocktails.

The basic order is a mix-and-match plate where you choose a protein, a base of rice, noodles, or salad, and an accompanying side ($13-18). There was nothing exceptional about my roasted free-range chicken breast with gochujang aioli with sesame noodles and grilled broccolini ($13). The noodles were dry, but everything tasted healthy and fresh, no excess oil, fat, or salt. Really nice chicken. Again, a far cry from the mall fare of my youth.

What really got me int the door was the chance to order a hot stone bibimpap within the boundaries of a mall. The $14 bowl of beef bulgogi is served over seaweed infused rice and joined by kale, broccoli, bean sprouts, carrots, and onions. For two bucks more they toss on a sous vide egg. With a splash of Bibigo brand gochujang hot sauce, this perfect little meal outperformed my entire mall-bound childhood, Orange Julius included.

Experienced fans of Korean food will miss banchan, but if you’ve been waiting for this cuisine to break through to a wider American audience and become as ubiquitous a fixture as Chinese or Thai food, this is the place that could do it. I’ve come to grips with the idea: maybe for Korean cuisine to go mainstream, it needs to thrive in the mall.

The latest copy of the Reader

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

San Diego seawalls depend on Half Moon Bay case

Casa Mira townhomes sued after losing 20 feet of bluffs in storm
Next Article

San Diego seawalls depend on Half Moon Bay case

Casa Mira townhomes sued after losing 20 feet of bluffs in storm
Hot stone bowl of seaweed rice, mixed vegetables, bulgogi beef, and a sous vide egg
Hot stone bowl of seaweed rice, mixed vegetables, bulgogi beef, and a sous vide egg

There’s an aisle on the ground level of the B parking lot on the south side of Fashion Valley mall, where two arrows painted on the asphalt point away from the exit. Problem is, you have to disobey the arrows to leave the parking lot, because this is the only way out. It only took me two rounds of driving all the aisles to figure that out, like a lab rat in a maze.

Place

Bibigo Kitchen Fashion Valley

7007 Friars Rd #357B, San Diego

That pretty well illustrates my mistrust of malls. I grew up in them, of course. For a while I even had the top score on this old stand-up video game Space Harrier, in the arcade at the Plaza Camino Real mall (I guess they call it the Shoppes of Carlsbad now). Friday nights were spent cruising with my friends, going from the arcade to the food court to the movie theater, pretty much the whole Stranger Things loop. We enjoyed it, but really we went back week after week because it was the only place our parents would willingly drop us off for a few hours. I guess they thought its overt retail overtures marked it a safe zone for preteens. Whatever their reasoning, it was the nearest glimpse we suburban kids got to urban life.

Roasted free range chicken breast with sesame noodles and broccolini

So I avoid malls as an adult, because they remind me of an awkward time I was quarantined from the great wide world. And yet, here I found myself, stuck in this parking lot at Fashion Valley, because there was this restaurant I wanted to try.

Sponsored
Sponsored

It’s not like the old days, when mall food solely consisted of garishly cheap reheats along the lines of Sbarro and Hot Dog on a Stick. Lately, there’s credible food to be found in malls. Good enough that one might go to the mall to eat, and maybe do some shopping after, rather than the other way around.

Steamed mandu dumplings, filled with beef, carrot, and onion meatballs

What drew me to Fashion Valley was Bibigo Kitchen, part of a self-described Korean Cuisine Brand, that “takes 5000 years of delicious Korean cuisine and updates it for today’s modern, non-stop lifestyles.” That marketing copy did not lure me to the restaurant. I was more curious to see what it’s like having Korean dining carve out a spot in such a mainstream American locale. The last time I went to a mall seeking food was to check out the UTC Westfield location of Din Tai Fung, part of the restaurant chain that made xiao long bao soup dumplings world famous. But Chinese food has been all over America for a hundred years.

Korean food less so. That said, Bibigo is a dominant global food force in its own right (also with a presence at the UTC mall). It markets food to grocery stores as well as restaurants in global capitals London and Beijing. And it’s likewise spreading its reach throughout Southern California. It even has its own trademark dumplings: savory steamed Mandu dumplings ($6) filled with beef meatballs (or vegetables). It’s not xiao long bao, but it’ll do.

An open kitchen and stylish fast casual location at Fashion Valley mall

Found at a southern entrance to Fashion Valley, the restaurant feels sleek and modern, with high ceilings, plenty of polished wood, and a partially open kitchen. It sits at the upper strata of fast casual; you order at a counter and take a table flag, but you may order from a wide selection of teas, plus beer, wine, and soju and makgeolli cocktails.

The basic order is a mix-and-match plate where you choose a protein, a base of rice, noodles, or salad, and an accompanying side ($13-18). There was nothing exceptional about my roasted free-range chicken breast with gochujang aioli with sesame noodles and grilled broccolini ($13). The noodles were dry, but everything tasted healthy and fresh, no excess oil, fat, or salt. Really nice chicken. Again, a far cry from the mall fare of my youth.

What really got me int the door was the chance to order a hot stone bibimpap within the boundaries of a mall. The $14 bowl of beef bulgogi is served over seaweed infused rice and joined by kale, broccoli, bean sprouts, carrots, and onions. For two bucks more they toss on a sous vide egg. With a splash of Bibigo brand gochujang hot sauce, this perfect little meal outperformed my entire mall-bound childhood, Orange Julius included.

Experienced fans of Korean food will miss banchan, but if you’ve been waiting for this cuisine to break through to a wider American audience and become as ubiquitous a fixture as Chinese or Thai food, this is the place that could do it. I’ve come to grips with the idea: maybe for Korean cuisine to go mainstream, it needs to thrive in the mall.

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

San Diego Holiday Experiences

As soon as Halloween is over, it's Christmas time in my mind
Next Article

San Diego seawalls depend on Half Moon Bay case

Casa Mira townhomes sued after losing 20 feet of bluffs in storm
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader