Buying lunch on days in the office has always been a bit of a pain for me. With the ongoing cost of living crisis not only affecting consumers but also cafes and restaurants alike. This has meant that it's getting harder and harder for me to find meals that are good value for money (judged by quantity and carb content), which has been highly irritating and difficult for me to order out when I could bring a more nutritious meal from home. Having said that, I make an effort when coworkers encourage me to join them for meals, which is how we ended up at Ant Bowl a couple weeks ago.
Ant Bowl is the sister store of Ant Cafe in Underwood Marketplace. I've been meaning to try them for a while but never had the chance. Ant Bowl is situated on Adelaide Street, down from city hall. It offers food on a take away basis only with no dine in option.
The menu was fairly concise with an assortment of bap bowls, noodles, toasties and drinks. Notably the menu had an option to allow you to SWAP the rice option to a salad which is what I settled on for health.
They also had a small selection of rice balls for sale at the counter.
Anyway we ordered and it took about 10 minutes for our meals to be put together. We packed it all up and hiked back to the office. First thing I noticed when we opened our bowls is how small mine was compared to my colleague.
My colleague ordered the salmon bap bowl with no alterations. It came with an assortment of salads and a small portion of Korean purple rice at the bottom. She enjoyed the meal.
I ordered the bulgogi bap bowl with a SWAP to salad and added some tteokgalbi. Sadly, Ant Bowl didn't seem to understand that to swap something means to replace one item with another. In my case, I had almost the exact same bowl as my coworker, without the rice. This resulted in the sad depleted bowl you see in the picture. Although the flavours were good, I was definitely still quite hungry after finishing. The amount of protein in the bowl was also very lacking, especially considering I paid extra for tteokgalbi.
I ordered an extra bulgogi beef rice ball on the side as I suspected that portions would be small (but not THIS small). The rice ball was pricey and I had expected there to have been some kind of filling like you would get at ichiba. Unfortunately there was not and it was largely comprised of minute pieces of bulgogi and furikake throughout.
Overall it was definitely a disappointing experience at Ant Bowl. The flavours were fine but for almost $30, I really expected a more fulsome meal. The problem with the rice being "swapped" for nothing was also not addressed by them when I attempted to reach out. As such, I most definitely won't be back, nor can I recommend them as a good place for take away lunch in the city.
Price Range: $15 - $30pp
Taste: 7/10
Value: 4/10
Service: 4/10
Environment: N/A
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