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| - I don't know if this place deserves a 1.5 or 2 stars because the service was at least not bad and I didn't end up in the ER.
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Was not expecting much from almost the only Korean restaurant in Charlotte, but it didn't meet even my low expectations.
Barbecue meat selections were very overpriced ($29.95 for kalbi?) so we stuck with Traditional korean dishes.
Ban chan (traditional free sides) tasted old, not quite like they went bad, but on the threshold. Flavored were definitely off as well.
Steamed mandoo (dumplings) contents were pretty unsatisfying. Didn't taste fresh. The soy sauce they offered was heavy sugar water with a tiny bit of soy sauce. ddeok guk (rice cake soup) my wife ordered was very thin broth that didn't taste right. The ddeok itself was not plentiful.
Bo Ssam (steamed pork belly sliced) was clearly precooked and over cooked so the meat was kind of pulverized. Didn't bring steamed cabbage with it that was supposed to come, and the raw oyster on top of the kimchi smelled quite a bit. Not openly rotted oyster but I was gagging with the smell. Very very leery of raw seafood that gives off any kind of ages odor.
As I wrote before, service was reasonably attentive, though it was clearly a very very slow time of the evening.
I want this place to do well but with this level of quality and set up, I don't see how it can. In offering a huge menu of korean items and ban chan ( which requires a lot of prep and storage), they would need to do massive volume of business to be able to not have stuff go bad, and this place seems to not know if it's trying to be a full menu Korean restaurant or an overpriced Korean Kalbi BBQ, and as a result it doesn't do either very well.
Ultimately I would not go back. I would definitely choose to skip korean food over eating this korean food, even if I had a craving.
And I could actually make a better meal with the frozen and instant Korean foods from Super G mart to make kalbi or most of the korean dishes offered here. No hyperbole.
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