GAJA Korean BBQ & Bar Amsterdam — Restaurant in Amsterdam

Service took a long time, very dloe. Meals getting there late. Got the impression they need way more employees to handle this.

Quality was OK, but expected more for the price.

Me and my partner wanted to smoke. They required to take our ID hostage to avoid non-payment. As far as I know, this is not compliant with GPDR/AVG and thus I filed a complaint with the restaurant.

Dear GAJA BBQ, management,

I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to discuss an incident that occurred at your restaurant on a recent visit, which raised serious concerns about the protection of my personal data.

During our meal, my dining partner and I expressed a desire to smoke, which is where the issue lies. Your staff requested that we hand over our identification documents, such as our IDs or passports, as a sort of guarantee against potential non-payment. While I understand your concerns about customers potentially leaving without paying their bills, this method of preventing such situations is highly inappropriate and, as per my understanding, unlawful.

I would like to bring your attention to two pertinent legislations – the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Algemene Verordening Gegevensbescherming (AVG). Both of these regulations mandate the necessity of obtaining explicit and informed consent from individuals before collecting, processing, or storing their personal data. These legislations also state that data collection must be limited to what is necessary for a specific purpose.

In this case, the use of passports or ID cards to ensure bill payment is excessive and disproportionate. Identification documents carry a substantial amount of sensitive personal information that goes far beyond what is necessary for the transaction at hand. Additionally, there was no explicit consent obtained for collecting such sensitive data.

I would urge you to consider these regulations and revise your restaurant’s policies accordingly. An alternate solution could be asking for a credit card to hold the bill, which is a standard practice in many establishments and does not infringe on personal data protection laws.

As a customer, I am entitled to the privacy and protection of my personal data, and as such, I am disappointed in this breach of trust. I hope that this issue will be taken seriously and addressed promptly.

Thank you for your time and understanding. I look forward to your response and the resolution of...

We came here for our reunion after our exchange in Seoul. Well, let’s say it’s not up to Korean standard but for European standards, it’s pretty good. The price, unlimited amount of various dishes for 40€ per person. However, drinks are not included and extremely overprice. It doesn’t surprise us that soju is 14€ even tho it’s an aberration because in Korea it’s 1€, therefore we had to share 1 bottle for 3 people but we understand that it’s an imported product therefore the price is high. Cass beer was small compared to her Korean brothers. What left us speechless is the price of the water. Can you believe 0.2 liter of water is 4€ and a bottle 7.5€ for 0.75l? We were left dehydrated…

Regarding the service, the staff is friendly even tho instructions were at first too quiet and unclear. However we would like to stress the fact that they are very friendly and cute.

In our humble opinion, as now Korean food experts, we would suggest adding garlic to the selection of side dishes and get rid of the sweet potato. In addition, we were left confused about the inclusion of glass noodles in the kimchi soup, never seen before and not necessary. Sesame oil, salt and pepper were lacking and constitute in our opinion an essential part of pork belly consumption. By the way it also could be thicker in our opinion. Tteokbokki not the best, another miss for Europe as we never encounter a place capable to recreate them accurately. Chicken was good but not fresh enough. Some parts of the galbi were too bony, but some of them were perfectly fine: lottery I guess. When it comes to dessert, we were happily surprised that MELONA made an appearance in the menue. However she was looking a little tired (defrost and refrozen).

The atmosphere did not match your typical Korean bbq, it’s a modern twist on it. It’s slightly too cliche. Kpop enthusiasts will enjoy the stairs leading to the bathroom and the ambient music that was at the perfect volume meaning not too loud.

To sum up, we really enjoyed our time in GAJA, and would recommend it to friends we like. We were not left hungry and we wish all the best to the staff who, by the way, is not Korean. It may be a cause for the lack of...

Went there with friends: good location nearby central station, appetizing variety of chicken and sweet potato fries, no bbq smell on clothes. I really like the yuzu icecream!

I honestly wonder what the standards are of the other reviewers, but the earlier mentioned things were the only positive ones during our visit. First of all, false advertisement on website menu: there is no ayce bingsu and no corndogs. I travelled +1,5 hour with the expectation that those were actually available. Personnel explained it was because they had only opened recently and still trying out with menu. Please put the unavailability on the website/ sns to prevent disappointing customers.

Maybe it was an unlucky day for us or because Gaja is only recently opened, I wouldnt advice it to friends and personally wouldnt return during this start up period: I ordered mint tea, I never ever had only received some floating mint leaves before, there should be at least one stalk right? Marinated bulgogi and galbi didnt look and taste properly marinated, barely sauce visual. Bulgogi was quit tough to eat because either we baked it too long, or the slices were too thick. Because of this I didnt even bother to order the galbi-ribeye. In my experience the bulgogi was not thinly sliced enough Marinated lamb, spicy bbq chicken, fried cauliflower, marinared shrimp all tasted the same: sweetened gochujang sauce Kimchi Pancakes were semi burnt Dumpling (mandu) was not pan fried but deep fried (oily and obvious frying spot on dough) Shrimp tempura (instant store bought) was deep fried for too long, it was dark brown Normal fries were soft and not crispy in contrary with sweet potato fries bean sprouts side dish was sour/ in my opinion had a strange taste/ maybe ‘expired’?

Overall; room for improvement. Everything is visually well presented but taste is lacking. I would rather spend my money somewhere else. Personnel was friendly, experience is needed (we ordered last round but didnt receive, after asking, personnel gave the excuse that personnel couldve brought the dished to the wrong table. We had to...