Seoul Express Firle — Restaurant in Adelaide

Review based on today’s experience as of 17 July 2020

쌀밥도 할줄 모르시면 식당을 안하시는 것이 좋겠네요 바쁘다는 말은 다 핑계 아닌가요

I ordered my favourite pork bone soup and fried chicken. Dishes are good as usual however the rice served today at 1pm are too watery. As a restaurant cooking rice with a world well-known Korean rice cooker is a very fundamental and basic stuff you should not get it wrong.

Giving you 1 star just means my frustration and dissatisfaction about rice - rice is the simplest thing to do and you guys did it wrong. I can’t accept that.

A gentleman at checkout was confused with the takeaway container charge policy: if you are going to charge extra ($1 for card transactions in containers) - please set up as sign which tells customers paying cash containers are 50cents otherwise $1

——————— Review 5 months ago：

I have been there so many times and really enjoyed the pork bone soup served with rice - this would be so much better if I can customise the spiciness of the soup by give the option of adding extra chilli paste in there coz I don’t think it’s salty or spicy enough; apart from that I also suggest you to make the noodles in the soup optional - as the noddles tend to stick on the bottom of the stone pot and really hard to come off... will be so much better if there’s an option to add extra mushroom/veggie in there instead of the noodles. I had ordered the cold noodles the other day but got served the wrong one without soup... it could’ve been my mistake pointed the wrong thing then ending up with being charged extra for putting some more cold soup in it :( - thank you for installing the new aircon too coz previously was too hot in there and the little mini fan aircon wasn’t helping much!!! but anyway I still like everything there at reasonable pricing on the menu. I have been to a lot restaurants especially the Korean ones nearby. This one turns out to be the best one and most affordable one that’s why I keep coming back. Some minor suggestions for you: It will be worthwhile trying to do a stamp/loyalty card thing so that regular customers can get some reward upon their 5th/10th visitation when ordering over a certain amount. You are definitely doing a great job! I’ll see you...

Overall, great restaurant and great food. I like how you as one of the owners, are proactively responding and attempting to improve your business using these customer reviews.

But just a few points to consider for the owner reading these reviews.

Fast food? The food is served on avg the same wait times as all other regular restaurants. Not technically 'fast' food, say compared to maccas HJs etc.

Water? If your making all the food as good as any other regular (non-fast food) korean restaurants, then why not stop all the complains related to table water by spending the small amount of your monthly expense on tap water. How much for few sets of glasses and jugs/bottles?...

Attitude? I like how as an owner you defend your staff in some reviews. Much respect! Personally I have not noticed the staff giving me attitude but let's be honest, people that come here (to Google reviews) and write essays to complain about getting bad customer service, maybe it happened? No one likes spending all that time and writing those paragraphs unless they had some sort of noticeable experience.

Going through the reviews, I noticed that you also 'attack' some of your reviewers when you have the opportunity just because you dont agree with them. As a business owner, you should understand what the potential consequences of the public negative remarks targeted at your customers, will have on your business brand and image. I would suggest learning a little more on how to constructively take on both positive and negative criticism.

Hopefully some of the suggestions are helpful. Alternatively you might 'attack' this review...

Update 15 March 2022: There is no more offensive odour in the air, so I have updated review from 2 stars to 5. The food here is very good.

What is good: The beef rib soup with sweet potato noodles is very delicious, both ribs and broth were excellent! The seafood spicy soup with sweet potato noodles was very good too Korean fried chicken is very crispy although the meat is a bit tasteless

What is bad: There is a very pronounced offensive, stinky odour in the entire restaurant, apparent the moment you walk in, and that's why I am giving it only 2 stars and I will not come back. There are 2 other Asian noodle restaurants in Adelaide which also have this awful stench.

The restaurant is tiny. Tables are spaced 1 foot apart, see photo. You can hear every word of conversation at your neighbouring tables, and the whole place is super...