Matthew H.
Yelp
Came in for dinner during Restaurant Week. I was cautiously optimistic since reviews of this place were quite positive, even though the prix fixe menu price was def on the higher side. Unfortunately my hopes did not quite pan out at all.
For our first course, the two of us ordered the mandu and the bossam buns. The mandu was average - fillings were not that flavourful, and the pan fried wrapper was a little bit too thick. The bossam bun was very inauthentic; the pork slice was more like roasted char siu meat instead of the lighter, boiled pork shoulder/belly for bossam, and the buns felt more suitable for Taiwanese gua bao or something rather than bossam. It tasted fine, but not quite what I was expecting.
The second course was a bowl of japchae and a bow of salad. The japchae was fine - nothing special, and def not worth a sixth of the price of this meal. The salad was also just OK? the chili vinaigrette was too heavy for my taste and the actual veggies tasted pretty meh in and of themselves.
We ordered the kalbi jim and sangyupsal for the third course. The sangyupsal was actually pretty good (the high point of the meal, I think) - meat was tender and cooked well. (I say this somewhat facetiously because we cooked this ourselves.)
The kalbi jim was not good. First, I think it could plausibly have been confused for a boeuf bourguignon dish or something. It was kind of odd that galbi jim came boneless (can't remember ever having had that before), but worse, it was weird that it had none of the texture or flavour of short rib (much more like the type of chuck roast / brisket in beef stews in Western cuisines). Also, the soy glaze basically had no flavour? not even the minimally expected saltiness; and overall the meat was dry and hard to chew.
All in all, not a great meal, to say the least - and to think it came out to be around $130 for 2 people? I already complain about how expensive dining out is in NYC nowadays, but for this price, I can think of loads of better Korean restaurants out there.