Gimbap me up! #dailyfoodphotography

This is my entry to @howtostartablog's #dailyfoodphotography challenge. You can read more about the challenge by clicking on this link here.

Gimbap or Kimbap (김밥) is a #Korean dish. Other's call it Korean sushi. The photo above was taken using Nikon D5000.

Baguio City is one of the #Korean capitals of the Philippines if you will due to the flock of Korean students and/or families and businessmen. Now, don't ask me for facts and figures. This is only my observation. Koreans make up the majority of foreign nationals who come to the city. The list includes Japanese, Chinese, other Asian nationals and Europeans. A lot of Koreans come here to study English as Second Language. Korean schools have sprung up here and there to cater to this need. The majority before was done online but now since they found that it is cheap to live in the Philippines, they then came here instead. With that, Korean businesses followed mostly restaurants. There used to be only one Korean supermarket in city. Now there are a handful. Korean businesses used to be found only in Baguio City but now the neighboring towns have Korean restaurants, bars, and other stores, too. They even have their own association here.

One thing admirable about them is that they look after each other.

This Korean culture invasion is witnessed all over the country from pop culture, to fashion, music and most especially food. Kimchi, another Korean dish, was frowned upon because of its overall taste but in particular the spiciness and the smell. Overtime, it has invaded our palates and turned out to be our liking.

Some Filipino entrepreneurs took advantage of this and put up stalls for Korean street food like #Ramyun, which tops the list, #topokki, #gimbap, to name a few. One of those stores/stalls is where the photo above was taken. We usually paired Ramyun with gimbap although gimbap in itself is a complete meal because it has gim, a thin sheet of seaweed that wraps the rice, vegetable, egg and sometimes bacon or ham. One thing about Korean dish is the use of sesame - seed, leaves, oil. Different stores have different taste so we usually go to places where we can eat the best.

Sometimes we indulged ourselves to Korean buffet where their grilled meat - bulgogi and samgyeopsal is satisfying. However, I only go for beef though while my friends eat their share of pork.