LAON Korean Restaurant — Restaurant in Whitchurch-Stouffville

I'm baffled at the high rating this resto has (but a lot of reviews are saying that it's basically the only korean resto in Stouffville so that's prolly contributing to the extremely inflated score??).

My gf and I came for dinner around 7pm on a recent thursday.

We walked in, were greeted and seated right away. Many reviewers seem to be saying that the service is slow because they are very slammed during dinner time. Not the case in our experience. In fact, the resto only had around 3 tables of guests occupied during the time we dined.

The resto itself is quite big and can fit a decent amount of ppl. The washrooms are actually quite nice and not too tiny.

Now let's get straight to the food.

The side dishes (aka banchan) at the start of the meal were hit and miss. The radish kimchi and regular kimchi you could tell was store-bought and not homemade (overly sour and had the "container" taste). The potatoes were undercooked (still firm in the middle). The best banchan imo was the fish cakes (albeit the super aggressive soy sauce seasoning). In Markham and North York, you'll also usually get japchae or bean sprouts as part of your banchan. Here, the japchae is included as a main dish on the menu rather than a banchan.

I ordered K5 which is a sweet bulgogi soup. I've eaten this dish enough to generally know what it's supposed to look and taste like. Instead of enoki mushrooms they put beech mushrooms in the dish (the funny part is the menu even shows the enoki mushrooms sitting on top). Second, the taste of the soup was on the mild side (dare I say even heading towards bland). Third - and this one I'm seeing others commenting a lot on - is the portion. Holy cow this might be the smallest ttukbaegi bulgogi bowl I've ever received lol. Like there is no way they brought out this bowl and thought a teenager wouldn't still be hungry let alone an adult male. The bowl was practically half empty.

Moving on to K11 which was dumplings in beef broth (what my gf ordered). I want to be as nice as possible when I caveat this, but the broth tasted like chinese soup (rather than korean) and the dumplings were clearly store-bought. They also gave her like 4-5 dumplings and less than 10 rice cakes (I could understand this if the dumplings were king-sized mandu but they were not). The dish was more broth than anything. Moreover, the broth was lacking seasoning and the dumplings were overcooked to the point where the dumpling wrappers were shedding off before she even went to pick them up w/ utensils.

When we were ordering, we had specifically asked our waitress if both of the orders came w/ rice and she assured us that they did. My dish arrives with the rice in tow but lo and behold, when my gf's dish arrives she gets no rice at which point I inquire. I'm told that her dish actually doesn't come w/ rice which kinda cheeses me cuz we both heard her say it's supposed to come w/ rice. No matter, the waitress brings out some free rice cuz of the misunderstanding which I really appreciate.

And that leads me to service which I would say is amazing, almost "overly-attentive" if you will. All the staff serve you with a smile and we always had someone checking on us to see what we needed.

That's why, in a way, it pains me to give this sub par review as the service was good. I can't justify giving a good review because of the lack of flavour, portioning and pricing.

Usually I like to give all restos a fair shot but I don't think I'll be returning because the food was just miles off what I...

UPDATED:

After my disappointing experience the first time, my friend told me that their gamjatang is good so I decided to give it another try since it is my favorite Korean meal. I went by myself after picking up something from a nearby store on a weeknight around 5:30 p.m.

It was pretty quiet in there (one other table) so I was able to get seated quickly. The lady serving me tried giving me a menu but I told her that I already knew what I wanted & proceeded to order their gamjatang. Shortly after taking my order, a gentleman came out from the back and made chitchat with me and also asked the other table how they are enjoying everything.

Right before I got my gamjatang, I got all my banchan which consisted of kimchi (extra spicy just the way I like it), watercress, potato sticks and fish cake. My gamjatang came out hot and full to the rim. The one thing I love about the gamjatang here is that they give you lots of napa cabbage. There was also a lot of pork bone/meat in it this time. So much that I struggled to finish it. My server even came by to ask if I wanted a refill of the banchan although it was just me & I couldn't even finish those.

I loved my meal. The meat was tender, the broth was rich and delicious plus it had tons of cabbage and green onions in it. The side bowl of rice was cooked correctly & was fluffy soaking up all the flavors of the pork bone.

The gentleman was out front again so I asked if he was the owner. He said it is him and his mom that own the restaurant. They moved here from Vancouver after his mom came to visit friends and just fell in love with Stouffville. He is so kind & seems to really care about their business which made me want to help them succeed. I told him about my initial experience with the spicy beef soup and how it was tough. He said he would look into that & was grateful that I shared this with him. He really wants to know if something is not right so to those who have not had a good experience, ask for Gin/Jin and he will listen to your concerns.

Gin/Jin also gave me a small version of what I believe is their traditional Korean dessert Yakwa (Korean honey pastry). He said it's flour marinated in honey and topped with pumpkin seeds. I really enjoyed this as it was not too sweet and just enough sweetness as a dessert after a scrumptious meal!

I'm looking forward to visiting again next Monday!

Ordered the spicy beef soup and unfortunately the beef was super tough & chewy. The banchan consisted of 4 items: kimchi, pickled radish, pickled cucumber with miso, and sliced potato sticks. It all looked old & dull.

Service was decent. She even came to check on us but was a bit hard to get her attention when it got busy since she was the only one attending to the tables.

Nothing to comment on on the ambiance. It's your typical dining establishment.

Parking is easy as it's located in a huge plaza with plenty of parking.

Sadly, I won't be returning. In fact, my stomach hasn't been...

For transparency sake, I'll start with stating that service was a bit slow this evening, but at the same time I fully anticipated that a restaurant on day 2 of being open would probably be, so I ordered my takeout in advance, and waited slightly when I arrived. Especially after a very positive facebook post was made hyping the food up, so I played it safe and was patient. Otherwise staff were very friendly. The restaurant was pretty packed when I arrived, and staff were doing their best to try and serve people but it looks like demand for local Korean food is pretty high.

I ordered the dinner combo for 2 which consisted of 4 pieces of Kimchi Mandu (Dumplings), Japchae, and Spicy Pork with a few sides and rice. You can also choose Beef Bulgogi if Pork isn't your thing.

I'll start with the Mandu, they were fantastic and had just the right amount of crisp to them. Their size was also decently large compared to a lot of other places that serve dumplings.

The Japchae was also great and the noodles had a ton of flavour to them.

The Spicy pork was also exactly what I wanted, I'm a huge fan of Korean pork. We got the regular spice level, which still had some kick to it, but wasn't overwhelming like some other Korean restaurants we've tried.

The restaurant looked pretty nice inside, and they were playing some k-pop for ambient music. I could even recognize some of the songs that were playing.

Overall I was pleased with the food, and I am really glad I don't have to make my way to Richmondhill or Markham for some good Korean food. I'll be trying some other menu items in the near future for sure. It's also the perfect dinner to have while sitting down and watching a k-drama on netflix.

I do suggest being a bit patient as new restaurants in general are still generally trying to find their groove with things and its generally hard to gauge what demand is going to be like. I'd probably order ahead for takeout. I still rate their service 5/5 because the staff were doing everything they could and clearly the demand for korean food is much higher than anticipated.

I wish this restaurant success and I am glad we have some additional dining...