Stanley K.
Yelp
One star for opening 24 hours and one for the big shrimp in the seafood tofu soup which is rare. We went in on a Saturday night around 11pm. They were somewhat swamped and seemed under staffed, which we could understand, but the overall experience and food were just very mediocre. When we got in, we waited for a bit on the front before a staff asked if we were doing BBQ, which we said no, so she sat us on one of the 'private rooms' with 2 different table/party and gave us menus. Unfortunately, the other table was with few teenagers that were very loud, so we tried to go to the register and ask to be seated on the outside common area. But the staff looked irritated by our request and told us that the other table just paid and they will be leaving soon. Perhaps she was saving the other table for BBQ, but oh well, we tolerated it.
When looking at the menu, we hoping for ones with pictures on it as they are shown on yelp, but we only got the ones with words on it. Not sure if they changed management or what. We tried to ask and see if they had picture menus, but no one acknowledged us, so we ended up looking at the pictures on Yelp, which was a bit irritated as we still weren't sure if they had all the food and is still under the same management or if they had only specific items during certain hours at night. Rang the bell once we were ready to place our order, no one came to us. So we rang again several times between few mins interval and finally a staff came and asked if we wanted tea or water. She then came back with the tea we have asked for and took our order, that was unfortunately the last time we ever saw her, not that anything happened to her, at least we hoped not, but she just never came back to check on us or refilled our tea.
We ended up ordering a combo with beef ribs and seafood tofu soup, a beef tofu soup, and a porridge. The food took so long that we saw a busser brought a dirty dishes cart into the room to clean the other table, then the hostess sat another new party next to us. When the new party ordered, the hostess was asking if we are ready to order, which we responded that we have already placed our order and have been waiting on our food. That was not a good feeling until eventually when the food runner brought out our food in a cart with all the side dishes, we were more relieved.
I know some restaurants bring side dishes with entrees instead of before, but kind of wish they would have brought out side dishes first instead of having us to wait for everything at the same time. There were only 5 side dishes for a table of 4 people, which we felt like they could have given us. We tried asking for more side dishes as the food runner put down the food, but she left so quickly after she placed the food on the table that we felt like we didn't want to be a bother. The food were pretty mediocre. The seafood soup has big shrimp, which was very nice. For some reason, the beef soup was half filled comparing to the seafood soup. The worst thing was probably the beef ribs, because they were COLD. They were probably waiting for all the food to be ready at the same time, as the porridge and the tofu soups were very hot, but again, cold beef ribs were very disappointing.
Not sure if we would go back again based on the experience mentioned above, but perhaps if we really carved Korean food on a very late night/early morning and couldn't find another 24-hr Korean restaurant...