Ahh - Korean BBQ. It's really such an amazing food experience but it's one of those things that requires a lot of time and stomach space. Eric, Borami and I ended up here for our team dinner because Eric had never tried Korean BBQ and Borami and I love it. I had read about this place on Grubstreet and how it was a well known LA chain that everybody loves, so it sounded like a great option. There's a location in Flushing but the new location in the city is right on the edge of Koreatown. The place opens at 5pm and we got there around 6pm and it was already pretty crowded with the entire 2nd floor already full.
The menu is pretty standard - cuts of beef and pork, meat combos and then a few sides. We opted for the small pork combo ($48) which came with pork jowl, seared pork belly, pork collar and spicy pork belly. The waitress said that the small was enough for 2, so we ordered an order of the beef short rib ($29) as well and then I also wanted to get the seafood pancake. The one absolutely weird thing here was that they did NOT have bulgogi on the menu. What kind of Korean BBQ place doesn't have this staple meat item?! That was incredibly disappointing and probably the main reason I can't give this place 4 forks.
But on to the food. What I love about Korean BBQ is that the meal itself comes with a lot of side dishes - we had tofu, scallion and bean sprouts, kimchi, spicy soy bean past stew and then strangely steam egg and corn with cheese. The last two were things that I've actually never seen before in Korean BBQ. It was an interesting touch but not sure if I really needed it with my meal. The waitress started with all pork first and she stands there and cuts and cooks it for us. To be honest, there was so much of it I had no clue which cuts I was eating but everything was delicious - meaty and fatty at the same time. We had chosen the pork because I had read on Yelp that a lot of people had preferred the pork to the beef here but after trying both I have to say that I actually preferred the beef cut that we had over the pork. I can't believe the waitress told us that the small combo only ate 2 people because we were all stuffed the brim after just the pork cuts that we ended up leaving behind quite a few bites of meat which made me so sad. We were probably also stuffed because of giant pancake dish we had also - it was a bit too thick in the batter for me but it had a nice crunch on the outside and it was stuffed with seafood and scallions on the inside. I think I was confusing it with the Chinese version where it's thinner and lighter because this one was pretty dense.
The service was very attentive and the waitress was really nice but then this weird thing happened where the owner (?) came out and asked us how our meal was and kept talking about the meats we had and it was just kind of odd - I couldn't tell if he legitimately wanted to talk to us to understand our thoughts because the place was new or if he was trying to kick us out of our table because we were sitting there for a bit mulling over if we could finish the last bites of food. It was definitely crowded and I get that they wanted to turn our table over but I really hate feeling rushed, especially in a place like this where you are eating a LOT of food and sometimes you need a 2nd wind to finish everything. In any case, it was a fun night even though we only stayed for 1 1/2 hours. It's definitely a good option in the city but without the bulgogi it didn't quite feel like the right experience. Total bill: $58/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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