Bibimbap is one of the most popular Korean meals served in restaurants around the world. Part of why people love it is the look: the vegetables are arranged in a perfect colour wheel, like a circle of paint, before you mix them. Then you ruin the picture on purpose with your spoon. That's the whole point.
There's a clever idea behind the colours. Traditional bibimbap uses five 'lucky' colours - red, yellow, green, white and black - the same colours that appear on a hanbok. Each colour stands for a direction and a food group. So a single bowl has carrots (orange-red), pumpkin or egg yolk (yellow), spinach (green), bean sprouts (white) and dried seaweed or mushrooms (black). Eat one bowl and you've eaten a balanced rainbow.
There's a fancier version called dolsot bibimbap. The 'dolsot' is a hot stone bowl, served sizzling. When the rice at the bottom meets the hot stone, it crisps into a golden crust - the crunchiest, most delicious part of the meal. Some Koreans say the crispy bit is the whole reason to order dolsot bibimbap in the first place.
Bibimbap is super flexible. Vegetarian, meat-eater, spicy or mild, anything goes. It started in old times as a way of using up little bits of all the side dishes left at the end of the day. Today, it appears on aeroplane meals and in restaurants from Seoul to São Paulo.