Han's Coffee Shop

... a great little place for breakfast, 
even if you are dining Solo

(No official web-site thing.)


Place: Han's Coffee Shop

Location:  900 Sutter Street 
(on the corner of Leavenworth Street); 
phonicular contact: (415) 800-8792

Hours: (luckily for me) open for breakfast every day of the week at 7:00am

Meal: Bi-Bim-Bob[ sic ][1] ~ mixed vegetable, beef (which I had 여든 여섯-ed) over rice & hot sauce (that would be the very tasty Korean gochujang, of course); and a cuppa (and one-and-a-half refillas) their house Coffee (I can not be sure if they actually serve America's Best Coffee Roasting Company, as I did not really ask, but that was what the Coffee-pots had printed on them)

Well, it was "Back-up-Plan-City" once again because café bean was not yet open at 7:30am (I even checked this morning and it is printed on their door that they open at 6:00am every day, but I think that has not been updated in years). From the same mishap back in March, I knew that a good alternative was just a block westward along Sutter Street and simply returned to Han's Coffee Shop (see previous 'blog-entry from Saturday, March 10th, 2018).

There are not many items from which to choose for stupid vegetarian-types, but a couple of the other items that I might have ordered were:

Vegetarian (and, thankfully, not that ubiquitously and odiously-named "Veggie") Omelette ~ avocado, bell pepper, mushroom, onion, tomato, & cheese;

or

Q's Favorite Omelette ~ grilled chicken (which would not cross the road for me), bell pepper, onion & cheese and mushroom.

Unfortunately, I was informed the last (first) time that I ate there that their kimchi is made with fish-sauce in it or I would probably have gone with Kimchi Omelette (kimchi, bell pepper, onion, cheese, ham [which I would also have 여든 여섯-ed], & rice ) this morning.

"Just what the h*ck kinda breakfastary slop is that there, Brian?" Consider this dish "Eggs Benedict with 'Seoul'"...

It is not stated on the menu, but like most standard bibimbaps, this is served with a fried (or sometimes raw) egg laid (placed, whatever) on top. The whole point is to mix up all of the ingredients with the base of rice on the bottom of the bowl. Oh, and, of course, to smother the entire thing with some tasty gochujang. The vegetables included in this were: julienned carrots, spinach, mushrooms (which were marinated in some kinda soy-based sauce and grilled), onions, and cabbage. Many places that I have had bibimbap also include julienned cucumbers and/or zucchini, daikon radish, and soybean sprouts.

This was a very interesting twist for me. In all the years I have been eating bibimbap (at least twenty to twenty-five years now), I had never eaten bibimbap (or even "Bi-Bim-Bob") with a fork and knife before. At first, I tried using my fork and knife like chopsticks, but that proved to be a bit unwieldy. It really did seem foreign eating this dish with a fork and not chopsticks.

I initially thought about ordering a side order of hashbrowns, but I am glad that I did not. It definitely would have been way too much food for me to finish.

Han's Coffee Shop had Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce), Tapatío® Salsa Picante Hot Sauce, and Frank's® RedHot® 
(Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce) for condimentary supplementation. None of those (or any of my own bottles of hot sauces that I had brought with me) were used/needed as I went very heavily with the gochujang that was provided in a plastic squeeze bottle; I seriously used about half of the bottle on my breakfast. Additionally, I also went with several grinds from my grains of paradise grinder.

There was an interesting "little" discovery after breakfast. I needed to use the restroom (well, I did drink two-and-a-half cuppas), so I headed up their back stairs to the public restroom (which is on a landing that looked to be used mainly for storage). This turned out to be a lilliputian bathroom; I kid you not, the ceiling was not even 5' high. I would not recommend it for the claustrophobic at heart, Lemuel.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating:
Bi-Bim-little Robert ~ 6.2

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1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day:

They have this listed on their menu as "Bi-Bim-Bob". Now, I am no expert on transliteration from Korean-to-English, but I have never seen that particular spelling before. Normally, the Korean word "비빔밥" (which basically translates as "mixed rice") is transliterated as "bibimbap", "bi bim bap", or "bi bim bop", Robert.