Rice Balls of Fire

Tried this place before seeing the reviews on here– I’m actually really surprised to see such mediocre reviews because I had a good experience.
I ordered the Alaska Sushi Wrap. It was a good size, about the size of an arrowhead water bottle and very filling. It had a great amount of fresh salmon in it which admittedly, I had really low expectations for considering sushi wraps/​burritos i’ve tried at some other places. Most other places use Soy Paper to wrap up the dish but I really liked that they used Nori. It was a really good choice and I would order it again.
I took away a star because the price listed on their website for what I wanted ($ 10) was actually $ 13 when I got there, plus a random $.50 for paying with debit. I already made the drive to the food truck area and I wasn’t gonna leave without my damn Sushi Wrap, so I just coughed up the extra $ 3.50.

All of the signs were telling me not to go to this truck but I was at the street food cinema and the movie was about to start and it had the shortest line so I thought I would give it a shot. I didn’t want to miss the first few minutes of the movie, well the meat was dry and didn’t have any flavor the tea was watered down and everything was overpriced not to mention they took forever with my order! It’s probably because they kept making mistakes on orders while I was waiting I noticed two people complaining about not having their order correct not to mention the employee was rude and blamed the customer for the mistake! Bad food, overpriced and bad customer service not worth it on any level

I got a Korean BBQ Rice Bowl with Spicy Pork and Kimchi plus a pork belly rice ball. I was very disappointed. For the price I paid $ 16, I expected a little better. Spicy pork was too dry, no real flavor. Pork belly rice ball also didn’t have any flavor. I only ate half and threw the rest away. Also, the employees sucked at customer service. Overall I’ve had worse but for the price, that’s why I gave them a 1 star.

I really, really, really wanted to like this place!
I love onigiri (rice balls). I would eat them every day had I the patience and skill to make them. That’s why I as SO excited to finally try out Rice Balls of Fire. They had LOTS of interesting menu options and a few different types of onigiri to try. I opted for my favorite, salmon. Once I got my rice ball however, it wasn’t what I expected…
Now, these aren’t traditional onigiri by any means. They do come with nori, some furikake on top, and a filling inside the rice. That is where the similarity ends. They are much, much larger than any rice ball I’ve ever seen before. Think the size of a soft ball. Because of their large size, they are very hard to eat. For $ 6 I was hoping to have a good amount of the salmon filling inside the giant sized rice ball. You know, to make that expensive price worth it? But no, I had four pieces of salmon, each of which were about the size of two dice put together.
So, it did taste great, the salmon was fresh. The nori crispy. The fruikake adding that extra bit of umami. I just am left with a bad taste in my mouth that I feel that I just didn’t get the value for my money.

Among the many trucks I came across at Santa Anita Park during my visit was Rice Balls of Fire. The name alone caught my attention so I decided to grab a couple of snacks.
There was a decent amount of items to choose from but I narrowed my selections to the Korean burrito and a spam musubi. The Korean burrito was pretty good. Having kimchi fried rice instead of regular rice in the burrito was great. it brought more flavor to the bulgogi. There’s also a teriyaki sauce they provide that made the burrito even more flavorful. Wish I would have used the sauce sooner rather than towards the end.
The spam musubi was nothing new. Good taste of spam and seaweed but way overpriced. $ 5 for a musubi is a bit steep. The picture on the truck shows two musibi’s next to the price tag but you only get one. I was hungry and this truck was one of the few that had better menu items so I went with that price.
This truck provides decent food they should reconsider the price for their spam musubi. Something so simple and small should at least be half the $ 5 cost.
Lunch 5÷7÷2016

I love food…
I was in line and some guy was complaining that the quality has gone down but it is clear that they raised the prices on the menu as every item had masking tape with a handwritten number for each item, over the old price.
I ordered the 3 tacos. They were practically flavorless and dry and the limes they served with these tacos were also dry. There were no napkins and I was asked to go back and forth between windows to get one. Yeah… no! #fail
If you read this and have the option to buy their food… I would suggest you pass.

Ordered sushi balls–
They were two large flavorless rice balls filled with minimal filling. Really disappointed spending 10 dollars and them charging me an unmarked fee of 50 cent for credit card.

I am here to share my feeling for your reference: today I went to this food truck right in front of the museum LACMA. First, the food was really disappointing. I ordered Tacos, but I ended up with the feeling to throw up, since it’s hard to chew and digest. The meat inside the tacos is a little disgusting, and the tacos is too soft and wet for me.
Second, they made a stupid mistake by charging my debit card $ 85.07 for the one taco I ordered, while it should be $ 8.5. I think I was still lucky cuz after my museum visit, I checked my bank account, just random checked, and found out the $ 85, I was like what the hell, seriously? So I went back and showed the guy of my bank account. His attitude was not apologized. So they charged me again for the $ 8.5, and said they were going to refund me. But idk how long it’s gonna take for the refund cuz they are using an app called square to charge money. So I will see, just wanna remind all of you, pay cash to food truck, and remember to take the receipt! But I will definitely not come back or recommend it to other people.

Wish I could rate 0 stars. Don’t make the same mistake as me and eat here without reading the Unilocal reviews. This truck is a SCAM and needs to GO OUT OF BUSINESS. I can’t believe I paid $ 18.50 for what I’m about to describe below. How can they feel okay about themselves? GO TO JOGASAKI INSTEAD!!!
I just visited the truck in el segundo and I’ve never been so disgusted. The poke bowl was terrible… the fish was ROTTEN, old, and NOT fresh, and the «bowl» was basically fish and lettuce and onion. It tasted like fast food/​mall food court sushi but worse… I thought food trucks were supposed to be good. Everyone mentions this business’s food photographer really cheats what you get, and they couldn’t be more spot on. It’s false advertising! Even the boba was GROSS. The «tea» tasted like sweetened nasty liquid and the boba balls were hardly boba — instead they were cheap, fake and tasteless gunk balls. Didn’t know it was possible to eff up boba. Never again. So disappointed and terrified I’m going to get sick… don’t go here.

Visited this truck today at LACMA. I was really excited to see a rice ball truck, as we are huge fans of Sunny Blue — my 20 month old can easily take down two of sunny blue’s Tokyo tori balls. I figured we’d try it out for his lunch today.
Given that the food was from a truck on one of the busiest days for LACMA (free holiday Monday — Presidents’ Day), I wasn’t expecting it to be exactly on par with sunny blue. In my experience, trucks aren’t always at their best on crazy days like this. But unfortunately the bbq chicken rice ball was REALLY bad. There was hardly any seasoning on the outside of the ball. The chicken was inedible — no flavor (definitely not bbq), just chewy fat. We ended up getting him a hot dog from the Dogtown truck because all he could really eat was the rice.
I would’ve given this company one star based on this, but actually the guy taking orders was really nice about it. We were already done eating by the time I brought it up and I wasn’t looking for a handout, but I felt like they should be aware so other customers didn’t have the same experience. He graciously offered to replace it with something else, and when we declined as we had eaten, he refunded our money. I saw him showing the chefs the ball, and he told me that what we got wasn’t how it was supposed to be, so maybe it was just a fluke. Based on how attentive he was, I’d say I’d try the truck again.

Is there such thing as a high 2.5 stars like can I give them a 2.5+? I would agree that the pictures are WAY better then the food but knocking these guys for advertising is a little shady.
Food was ok, menu options where intriguing and I would probably try again just with slightly lower expectations, the major draw back here was the price and their B grade on the health inspection.
Food:
Po Boy Sliders (1 Soft Shell Crab/​1 Shrimp) $ 9.00 — Both had a good fry on them but the protein was minimal and kind of flavorless, or maybe just over powered by the other flavors. The shrimp was the better of the two as the crab was meh. My favorite part was the Hawaiian rolls they came on. For what you get (both the amount of food in the slider and # of sliders) the cost is a bit of a joke if not utterly ridiculous.
Hollywood Wrap: $ 10.00 — basically a sushi burrito with fried shrimp, Crab (they say snow crab, but looked & tasted imitation and was dressed in mayo) and tuna rolled with mixed greens and rice in Nori. Despite being a bit of a cluster**** it actually worked. At $ 10 I would have expected a bit larger serving but not offended with what I got. It was good enough that I’d go back to try one of their other wraps but I may wait till they get their health inspection to an A.

TL;DR — OK food but overpriced
***
I got the pork belly slider for $ 4. I was expecting the thick, ½ inch, fatty pork belly cuts that dissolve in your mouth. But instead they use the thinner pork belly strips that you get at kbbq (sam gyeop sal). It tasted good anyways because you can’t go wrong with pork belly, Hawaiian king rolls, spicy mayonnaise, and pickled cabbage but it was nothing I’d rave about for the price. I’d definitely be a fan if it was cheaper.

I love a good taro bubble tea/​milk/​slush — whatever you want to call it. I like the food here, too, but the portions are quite small for the price.

Two Toothpicks
Ordered a plate with ½ rib eye & ½ spicy pork, sides of kimchi slaw and steamed veggies, a pork belly rice ball and soda — $ 17.
Started with the plate — the spicy pork was ½ fat, ½ meat and wasn’t spicy, but did have nice flavor. The beef was tough, with nice flavor. The kimchi slaw, I could eat a quart of and the steamed veggies were overcooked, yesterday. All in all, I wouldn’t order it again.
The pork belly rice ball was almost as big as a soft ball. If you turn it over, you can see the stuff they put in it. The ratio was 85% rice, 10% air and 5% pork belly. The pork belly, even by itself, was unmemorable. All in all, I wouldn’t order it again.
A friend ordered the po’boy sliders — you would think he died and went to heaven. Perhaps, I just ordered the wrong things?
Went back to the office and used two toothpicks to clean the debris out of my teeth. I hope someone brought in bagels, cause I’m not full either.

This Food Truck was across the street from LACMA, so it was convenient. We had already paid for parking, and there were several choices of food trucks. The name of this food truck was catchy… I almost went for the grilled cheese… maybe I should have…
I chose the 3 Rice Balls for $ 11 and a large Watermelon slush for $ 6.
The rice balls were okay… could use more flavor, but I was too lazy to get up off the steps that we were sitting on. Got the Grilled Salmon, Bulgogi, and Pork Belly. They were very round in shape… not flattened like a musubi, so biting into it was challenging, especially with the furukaki all over the outside surface. I tried to use the nori like a lettuce wrap, but everything fell apart.
The watermelon slush had chunky bits of ice and watermelon seeds. I felt like I had to chew through every mouthful. I really liked the taste. .I knew it was real fruit!
If I went again, I would get a bulgogi plate or something else. It’s fun to try new things. .just gotta pick the right item or select by process of elimination. .Enjoy!

I asked the guy taking our order if they had french fries. To which he responded: «No, this is a Korean truck.» I think he forgot that I just ordered two burritos prior to my inquire and the boba, sushi wraps, & poke bowls among other things they had on their menu…
Maybe if they didn’t have such a diverse menu that diverges so extensively from their «Korean truck» I wouldn’t have to wait as long as I did for my food.
The bulgogi burrito had a more-​than-​i-​like amount of white rice, not much kimchi, and tough pieces of meat. Meat & its fat came out of the burrito with pretty much every bite. Nonetheless, it wasn’t bad– I also scraped out most of the rice, picked off the fat, and ate it with sriracha.

Five stars for the PICTURES of the food,
One star for what you actually get!
I ordered the pork belly burrito, The guy working there told me they make all their burritos with kimchi fried rice. What do I get? Plain white rice and a strip of pork belly — That was the whole $ 9 burrito. Messed up. If I knew that was going to happen I would’ve got the spicy pork cause I like a little spice -.- great I waited in a 30 – 40 minute line for a crappy overpriced burrito.
The poke bowls are also a rip off, I think the $ 12 poke bowl came with about 6 cubes of fish? The rest rice. And from what other reviews tell me, they don’t know a good fish/​meat to rice ratio. Or probably they do, they just wanna rip you off. Man, what happened to businesses wanting to make their customers happy instead of making an easy buck? Disappointed.
Considering that Korean food is my all time favorite cuisine and that I rate most places 4 or 5 stars, you should take this 1 star seriously.

I was at a convention and saw someone carrying a spam & egg Musubi. I stared lustfully at it until I realized I should stop being a creeper and just go get my own.
I ordered the spicy salmon rice ball and the spam and egg Musubi.
I’ll start with the Musubi. It was not done well. Firstly, there was way too much rice. I understand that they want to make it filling, but the rice was so heavy it automatically fell apart, which was actually fine with me as there was too much to begin with. It was also not seasoned at all. Part of the reason it probably fell apart was because it was so dry. Secondly, they cooked the spam wrong. It tasted like they took the spam from the can, cut off a slice, nuked it in the microwave for 2 seconds, then put it in the Musubi. You’re supposed to coat the spam in some type of sweet soy sauce base and fry it, or at least fry it in a pan then coat with sauce. This was disappointing.
The spicy salmon itself tasted good, but the execution of the rice ball was terrible. Generally the filling of a rice ball is supposed to be in the middle. The filling was on the bottom and basically melted the nori so the entire thing fell apart. This also had way too much rice. It was a half a pound of rice and an ounce of salmon. Lastly, with a rice ball the rice is supposed to be tightly packed so it stays together using salt water; salt water acts not only as a a way of seasoning the rice, but also to make it so the rice ball stays packed and sticks together. The rice, outside of the furikake topping, was completely loose and unseasoned. It was as though they took some old, cold rice made from the day before and just formed it into a ball on top of some salmon and wrapped it in a big piece of nori. Not good.
While the food looked good, it tasted mediocre at best, and I think next time I’ll try a different food truck.

I rarely give less than 3 stars but this food truck was really disappointing. I think they try to do too much with their menu which causes their quality to slack. They have sooo many items on their menu! From burritos, to sushi balls, to tacos, to the boba, to sliders, to slushies… I think they should rotate the menu instead of plopping everything on it. Then again, I’ve only seen it once so perhaps they do rotate it regularly?
FOOD
Rice Balls — I’m pretty sure they increase their prices based on what event they’re at, because when I saw them, they had 3 rice balls for $ 11 while other people say they’ve paid for 3 for $ 10. Regardless, the balls were disappointing. There was soo much rice and hardly any meat inside. I got the bugolgi and spicy pork balls and the meat was whatever. Nothing special. I feel like they could’ve marinated it more because the flavors were lacking.
Milk Tea was $ 5 for a 16oz! D: You don’t have to pay extra for boba but it’s still very expensive. Again, it tasted very ordinary and not worth it at all.
OVERALL
I won’t be coming here again. What a rip off! You’re basically paying for rice.

Review in #Haiku:
Tried this truck for lunch
Pork belly burrito, yup
Dat shizz was da bomb…