Jason C.
Yelp
Maybe it's the food that I ordered or the day I stopped by, but unfortunately my experience with the food was beyond acceptable.
I stopped by on Friday around 6pm, the place wasn't busy, only few tables were occupied... I was greeted in English and menu was provided... I wasn't sure what I wanted to eat, but eventually I went with their Kalbi (Galbi) and Miso Soup combo.
Few minutes later, the banchans came out... maybe it was because I was by myself, but they literally put 4 pcs of items per each dish of banchans, impressive that they gave 12 items, but not all of them were good.... that salad they served needs to go!! I had to laugh internally when I saw that... but at the same time, I understood they didn't want to waste any food... I mean, if I didn't eat any of the banchans, it would ended up in the trash anyways, so yeah I get it.
I got the Kalbi first... it smelled good, the dish was pipping hot thanks to the hot plate... that's all the compliment I can provide on this dish. What was wrong with it? 1) 1/2 of the meat on the hot plate were burnt, not from the hot plate itself, but from it being cooked in the kitchen and 2) the meat were very chewy.
Some suggestion on dealing with the chewiness of the meat - marinate the meat longer (either use more of Korean Pears or Kiwi, which will tenderize the meat), then re-educate the cook so they don't burn the meat when it's cooked. In addition, when marinating the meat, please add more seasoning to give it the right flavor!!!
Now on to the watered down Miso soup.... yup, this miso soup was a joke. It was like they took 6 cups of water, then added 1 tablespoon of miso, just enough to give it that flavor and call it miso soup! It's like taking one small package of kool-aid packet and trying to make 1 gallon drink out of it when it's meant for like 12 ounce serving!
The problem is that, Korean Miso soup requires a lot of miso if you aren't going to add other seasoning to the soup... to make this soup better, they need to add like 5 more tablespoon of miso!!! As for the broth, I just hope they didn't use water as base... I hope they either made a kelp broth or used the starch water from the rice.
Speaking of rice, is it me or are they using low grade rice down south? Please, please work on the flavoring of the meat and the soup and don't serve burnt kalbi!!!!