It was a Saturday night, 8:30pm.
We had a party of 9.
"Well, there's your problem right there!" you may say, but nay! We had our table in 5 minutes!
...we had our order paper (with "SEPARATE BILLS" sprawled across the top) taken 35 minutes later, despite ringing the bell and flagging down waitresses a couple times.
...our banchan (appetizers) arrived 45 minutes later.
...our party's first order arrived another 35 minutes later.
...our party's only order of dolsot bibimbap arrived 15 minutes after that.
Needless to say, we saw quite a few tables of 2-5 come in, eat (,pay) and leave before we even got our appetizers. This did not make any sense whatsoever.
One of our party members had to leave and was able to pay his portion of the bill separately. When we asked for the bill and reminded them we mentioned we wanted it separately, the waitress vehemently denied separate bills were possible.
And that was the straw which broke the camel's back...
We retaliated with simmering complaints.
Waitresses yelled at each other.
The bill was separated.
And after paying we did what we should have done at the 1.5 hour waiting-with-no-appetizers-food-or-attention mark: we finally left at 10:45pm.
As for the food, it was just OK.
Never again.