Zhubajie Premium - Makati — Restaurant in Makati

Our favorite place for authentic gamjatang! It was our first time to try the Makati branch after the BGC branch which we're regulars of closed.

🥢 Food: The gamjatang and creamy mala pasta were as good as we remembered. Pork was fall-off-the-bone tender and the soup gets even tastier & more complex as it simmers down. Good to know they've maintained the quality across branches but you have to ask for the ground perilla seed though as it's not readily available on the table.

They offer more dishes in Poblacion vs the BGC branch and also offer free soft serve ice cream w/c was pretty good, I must say! We also got the mentaiko ssamjang + rice and the boneless chicken feet and they were * chef's kiss * 🤌🏼

🥢 Service: Could be a lot better. We think this was their weakest point. The BGC branch staff were very attentive and anticipated your needs; meanwhile, in Makati, even with the buzzer, you'd be hard pressed to get any attention from their servers. There's a lot of them but no one seems to really care about their customers. Tables left vacant by other customers were left uncleaned; in fact, it was the delivery riders who cleaned the table even if there were a lot of servers at either the booth or in the kitchen (why are they even all in the kitchen?). Our assigned server disappeared after taking our orders and serving some of them. We also had to follow up on our drinks and our instructions on our leftover food weren't followed. The place wasn't even packed; it was about 40% full when we went. I hope they can get better training and get re-oriented on good service (better yet, hire the staff from their BGC branch).

🥢 Ambience: Nice setting; tables were far enough from each other though acoustics could be better as other customers could get loud. Nonetheless, the place was bright and airy though I wish they could do something about cleaning up the tables after customers have left. We stayed there for more than an hour and there were tables that have been vacated for 30 mins w/c remained uncleaned.

Also, another thing to note is parking remains to be a b*tch in Poblacion. While they have 1-2 parking slots in front of the establishment, this was always occupied so you have to look for side street parking which costs a...

Arrived at 12:40 at the restaurant. Only 2 parking slots allotted for them so you might have to settle for the Php 200 fixed parking rate across then, in front of Tenmaru and Krapow, which the attendant said have a ticket but ‘forgot’ to give me one when thry were leaving.

Food was top-notch. Gamjatang was fall-off-the-bones meat and tender, the veggies in the soup were good too. Jja yi che ( their version of jjajangyeon) tasted good but I confrmed it was instant, they just cook it way better than we do at home. Creamy Jjim pasta was my daughter’s favorite. The cold Bibim noodles were also good.. The Squid Pajeon was aldo good, but arrived an hour after we ordered it. We weren’t able to order Samgyupsal, maybe during our next visit.

It’s kinda weird that the waiting time for our food took a minimul of 40mins to arrive, because my son took a look at the kitchen, and it wasnt as hectic inside compared to the dining area.

Kudos to the staff, the girl team leader, for continously serving with a smile, and Harry Kim who gave us keychains for Father’s Day.

It was almost a perfect Korean dining experience, except for the long wait times and the scam parking fees (not under them).

Will we go back? For the...

Dined here earlier today with a friend visiting from Australia who wanted to try the food. We were in a bit of a rush since he had a flight back to Australia at 9 PM. We arrived around 7:30 PM and decided to order ready-to-eat items to save time.

My husband and his friend placed their orders first, and I followed shortly after returning from a phone call outside. Surprisingly, my order is Premium Boneless Wagyu Galbi (₱1,350)—was served first. Out of respect, I waited for their orders to arrive before eating.

Unfortunately, by around 8:30 PM, their food still hadn’t arrived. When we followed up, the waiter told us that the only order placed under our table was mine. I was honestly shocked, my husband and his friend had clearly ordered Chashu and rice (two orders), but somehow, their order wasn’t recorded at all.

In the end, we had to take the food to go and leave quickly to make it to the airport, hungry and disappointed. It was a frustrating experience, especially given the time pressure...