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| - Sujeo, the only Korean restaurant that charges you for banchan.
Banchan is the traditional small, communal side dishes served along with Korean cuisine. It's practically eaten at every meal in Korea. It's revered and standard, not meant to be served as an appetizer.
Ok rant over.
We ordered the egg roll ($4), potstickers ($8), bibimbap ($18), shio ramen ($12), and lychee soft serve ($4?).
The prices are excessive. I get that everything is locally sourced and everything was raised in a nice, socially responsible suburb, and came from a respectable family blah blah blah, but come on!
This is not what Korean food is about, I'm not saying everything needs to be overflowing but something that's meant as comfort food should be hearty, not skimpy.
The egg roll is the biggest perpetrator on the menu. At $4, it's one lump fried wonton wrapped indistinguishable shredded cabbage and I don't know what else. The pot stickers were a better value, came with 5 for the price tag. The wrappers were thick and the fillings formed a small ball in the middle so each bite was not uniformly.
The shio ramen had a very weak broth, not rich or buttery and lacked depth.The ramen was bouncy, still slurp-able. The bibimbap thankfully was served in a hot stone pot, came with bulgogi (BBQ beef), kimchi, sauteed spinach, and (way) over easy egg. The egg was too runny and could not be saved by placing it against the hot stone pot to cook it a little more. The Gochujang (spicy korean sauce) that's typically present with this dish was replaced with a anemic generic KimKim Korean Hot Sauce. If you know and treasure the flavors of Gochujang as I do, you might even be offended by this as I was. This had more of a strong vinegar tone, was watery and something that resembled kimchi brine.
This is at best a "dressed up" Korean fusion restaurant meant to be hip without sustenance - to ooh and ahh the Midwesterners - giving them a gentle introduction to Korean cuisine, and disguising its self as something that cannot be replicated from one's ajumma's (auntie in Korean) kitchen.
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