Oppa Asado Coreano (Korean BBQ restaurant) — Restaurant in Medellín

A new buddy took me here for the first time, around late-afternoon after some good ol' Medellin rain. The restaurant ambiance was nice. The bathroom was functional, clean, and smelled nice. The music was modern and gentle, and only added to the nice vibes of the joint.

My buddy just had a drink and a snack, while I got the ribs shown in the photo. It wasn't as "exciting" as I expected (maybe I had high expectations, but this is Korean cuisine not Thai cuisine). So the food wasn't "great", but it was definitely very good, and worth what we paid for it.

Let's talk about the service. At first it was just me and my buddy in the restaurant. A little later, a hot young Colombian couple (very white), and a hot young Asian couple came in to dine as well.

I noticed that the waitress who greeted us and took our order wasn't very smiley or pleasant, she was rather stone-faced. But when she greeted/welcomed the other diners, she was nice and sweet, full of smiles. This really rubbed me the wrong way, though I mostly brushed it off (especially at the urging of my dining buddy).

However, another waitress who brought me something, she was just as pleasant to us as the main waitress was to the white and Asian guests. Of course, she was afro-Colombian.

This treatment tracks with my experience with colorism in Colombia.

Because of the way the main waitress seemed to discriminate against us, I likely won't be going back to this restaurant. But listen to me... if you are white, white-passing, Asian, conventionally superficially attractive, or you are low-empathy and you don't GAFF about "woke nonsense" like casual bias and microaggressions... just ignore this entire paragraph and go enjoy the approximately-Korean grub...

I am normally vegetarian, but as I have been watching Culinary Class Wars got a serious hankering for Korean food (Korean bbq is one of those things you cannot replace with veg, so occasionally, maybe once a year, I treat myself). After reading someone’s review below saying that this was better than places in LA’s Ktown, where I have had some of the best food of my life, I thought I was safe. Alas, this did not satisfy my cravings. I ordered bulgogi and missed that classic, more vinegary (mirin?) marinade/flavour. The meat was also not sliced thinly, as I am used to, but in chunks. Adding some of the scallions with a sauce with a more classically Korean flavour profile that came on the side helped to give it more oomph, but was still not what I was craving. I’m not super picky with my rice but rice fans would probably be feeling it left a bit to be desired too. The food was not bad at all, not wanting to knock the cooks, just absolutely not better than some joints in LA KTown and may be catering more to Colombian tastes than classic Korean flavour profiles. Ambiance was cool (though I would get rid of the TV) and service was cute :) (though on busy nights like that y’all might think about hiring a second server so someone is available to talk to people waiting at the door). If you want a decent, slightly different meal in a chill, fun setting check it out. If you’re a Korean food connoisseur who wants to hit those specific taste...

As a lover of Korean spicy food, I sought out a highly reviewed of the few Korean eateries in the city. The glowing reviews of the few I've tried must mean either that the reviewers are not cognoscenti, or that the reviews were planted. However, once one gets at least a thousand reviews, I put more confidence in them. This place is an un-airconditioned, and not a Korean in sight either cooking, serving or eating. The servers were, as most Antiochians are, delightful. The food was a tad small compared to American restaurants' and flavor of my bibimbap was a pale shadow of the rich complexity I've known. Instead of a Gojuchuan based dressing, I must have gotten a Hoisin based sauce with added chili. I don't think I'll be trying other Korean eateries in Medellin as this one was one of the highest reviewed, and it was edible, but hardly authentic. Medellin as a whole has really had non-Colombian restaurants in signficant numbers in the 21st Century, and so the standards and the taste demands are not yet ideal. Give them another 10 years of progressive experience and I'm sure it would become much more of a...