BANGKOK RESTAURANT
The Red Sun
The Bangkok branch of one of Korea's leading restaurants for tokpokki.
With more than 50 branches in its native Korea, The Red Sun boasts of being one of the country’s leading restaurants for tokpokki (the Korean street food snack of rice cake in a sweet chili sauce). The small Siam Square restaurant is always crowded, and gets really packed in the evenings. The menu at this small but chic glasshouse café—dark woods, steel chairs, bare concrete and whimsical illustrations—is pretty short, as they focus mainly on tokpokki, which is offered with seven different toppings and three different spice levels
With more than 50 branches in its native Korea, The Red Sun boasts of being one of the country’s leading restaurants for tokpokki (the Korean street food snack of rice cake in a sweet chili sauce). But don’t believe the hype—at least not at this Bangkok branch belonging to celebrity model May Pitchanart Sakakorn.
Open since July, the small Siam Square restaurant next to Chula Book Center is always crowded, and gets really packed in the evenings when you can expect a pretty long queue. The menu at this small but chic glasshouse café—dark woods, steel chairs, bare concrete and whimsical illustrations—is pretty short, as they focus mainly on tokpokki, which is offered with seven different toppings and three different spice levels—all of which we can barely feel.
The classic Chuesok Tokpokki (B395-925) comes with instant jjolmyeon noodles topped with pork and veggies. The soup thickens as the starches in the other ingredients break down, but it’s best right away while still piping hot. The supposedly award-winning porkapoka rice (fried rice with seaweed and sesame oil, B155/B185) is well seasoned and tasty enough, but really rather boring as just a bowl of rice. Be sure to order the trio of toppings that includes shrimp eggs, shrimp and mozzarella (B195/B365 including rice).
The other dishes are more like finger food, such as tokkochi (grilled tokpokki) with pork (B155). The meat is a bit salty, and the floury-tasting tokpokki becomes stiff and sticky as it cools. Not much better, the kimchi chicken “shaky” (spicy fried chicken meat, B130) are coated in a generic spice powder but make for a passable snack. On a positive note, we love their hash brown nori (potato cakes with seaweed, B95)—crunchy and aromatic thanks to the seaweed.
Service is attentive to the point of annoyance—eyes off a plate for one second and it’ll be gone. A new venue is expected shortly, but we can safely say you’re not missing anything if you haven’t braved the queue for the first one yet.
Venue Details
| Address: | The Red Sun, Soi Chula 64 (next to Chula Book Center), Phaya Thai Soi 64, Bangkok, Thailand |
| Phone: | 02-252-1395 |
| Area: | Siam |
| Cuisine: | Korean |
| Price Range: | B - BB |
| Opening hours: | daily 9am-9pm |
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