Downtown A-Boonsik, 에이분식, A분식 — Restaurant in Calgary

I visited A-Cafe (JusFruit) for the first time early this year, and they made a nice initial impression with the quality and craft of their menu. They have a large selection of items & a good variety of Korean street food!

For those that frequent the Korean market next door, A-Mart, it is conveniently located. When I noticed they had bubble tea I knew I had to check it out. Despite their lack of choices in flavours and use of powder for some, I sincerely enjoyed their bubble tea paired with their food. It was overall on par with other small boba shops, but not quite at the level of specialty stores like CoCo and Cha-Time. However, the food was top of the line and well worth the price. The food I ordered, as well as other customer’s food, had the air of authentic street food from the sidewalks of Korea. After having my first bite, that suspicion was quickly confirmed. Having some knowledge in this area, it really made me feel like I was eating Korean corndogs from Seoul - the ones that are currently trending amongst the Korean community there. In terms of what I saw on my first visit, the good far outweighed the bad. One must also take into account this location just opened up in March so there is still huge potential for growth. The one thing that I think could elevate their menu even further would be making the jump away from the aforementioned powder and throwing some variety into their bubble tea flavours, if they haven’t already. I could see that move bringing in a good amount of business & a lot of potential customers on the hot...

It's pretty good for quick Korean style snacks. However, I am only giving 3 stars as the recent change from A-Cafe to A-Boonsik has put drastic price increase into effect. For example, Vegetable kimbap was $6.99 before and now its $8.99 a whopping near 30% increase. Also Soteok-Soteok used to be $4.50 and now it nearly doubled in price to $7.50.

I understand that there has been surging inflation lately but $4.50 to $7.50 feels ABSURD! That's a +67% increase...

With these new prices, I don't think I will be frequenting them as much ... At these prices, I rather get a Spicy Salmon roll or something...

Also... they haven't updated their website's menu either to the...

So if I was rating just the food, I'd give a solid 4-4.5 stars. It was really tasty overall. However, it's very clear they haven't gotten their act together to properly run the business. The staff are very friendly, but they weren't able to serve us tteokpeokki (the main thing we wanted) because their rice cakes were not in a sellable state. Also took too long for what's supposed to be quick street food (~20 min)...and it wasn't even busy. I will be back to give them a second chance since the food was good, but hoping they can clean up...