Kyle W.
Yelp
Especially growing up in Los Angeles, I have very high expectations of Korean BBQ, and this place is quite decent with that standard. However, my experience overall is a bit mixed, but it was otherwise overall positive.
My friends drove to the Eastlake neighborhood and the parking situation for this restaurant is definitely quite challenging, but we were able to be creative like other cars and parked in a makeshift area of the parking lot, legitimately of course. We made reservations for 4 people at 8pm same day, and I highly recommend doing so, as the restaurant is quite small.
We got served some banchan, such as bean sprouts, fish cakes, kimchi, mashed potato, broccoli with gochujang, pickled onions, to name a few. What irritates me is that you only get one free refill of the banchan, and any extra you need to pay extra. What restaurant does that?? But, they were nice enough to give large quantities of banchan so that 2 complimentary servings of each is a decent amount.
We ordered a pork combo and an a la carte beef brisket. Pork combo comes with pork belly, pork jowl, pork kalbi, a bunch of vegetables (e.g., asparagus, mushroom, cherry tomatoes, onion), steamed egg (which was quite good, with some tamago), soybean stew (a bit salty, but hearty), and cheese fondue (not corn cheese...). It also came with a large bowl of salad, which I ate the whole thing myself as none of my friends really wanted salad - it was quite delicious though there was not much dressing.
The grill is electric grill??? Like, that kind of is a bit iffy as we know fire is an essential element for great KBBQ. Also, the grill is not oiled enough so the initial batch of meat stuck to the grill and it was a bit of a struggle to take it out. However, the grill is definitely hot enough for a decent substitute, but it just doesn't really taste the same. I guess the positive is that it is much harder to burn the meat. The pork without any sauce is still flavorful, though I expected a bit more in quality of the cuts for the price we paid. On the other hand, the beef brisket is amazing - juicy and with just the right amount of fat. The marinated pork was a nice finish to the meal, though the sauce was a bit on the sweeter side.
Service is okay - whenever we flagged down the waiter, he was able to refill water in a timely manner. Food overall is decent given it is an electric grill. Pricewise, we ended up paying around $40 per person after tax and tip, which is decent - a fraction of the price of Meet in Capitol Hill, though definitely not as upscale. I wish there were more places like this one, but with actual fire grill, at this price range, in the Seattle area, but Federal Way / Lynnwood might be the way to go, if not flying back to Los Angeles.