Kim's Family Korean Restaurant — Restaurant in Singapore

Used to frequent this place few years back. The side dishes, chives pancake & japchae used to be the best.

Returned ~2y ago & was enforced by the rule of minimum purchase of 1 main meal PER pax. They refused order of other dishes (eg. pancake/japchae) ala carte UNLESS 2 main meals are bought. It’s ridiculous because the portions will be too huge for two to finish, it’s simply a marketing strategy to get customers to overbuy.

We clarified with the staff when I came back last week and she let us order without the main meal reinforcement (though she didn’t look happy). However, the food quality was terrible! Not sure if it’s because the staff has changed as there are many new faces.

The chives pancake was UNDERCOOKED (refer to pic). It had no meat & was oily. Nearly 23 bucks for a pancake that simply consisted of chives and flour (they used to put some seafood chunks inside). The japchae noodles were TOO SOFT. The sides… some of them (potato, fishcakes, brinjal) were SO salty to taste & that’s a feedback from someone who already fancies salty food & korean fishcakes. Did not even finish it. Anchovies were soft & had a bit of fishy smell.

They also no longer even provide rice water anymore, just chilled cold water. Servers just do the bare minimum of their jobs. They also changed the walls to write on which was one of their cool points as people write the dates they came/drew on the walls.

So sorry to say, there’s really NOTHING special/unique about this place anymore. It’s so overpriced for a quality much below average. Rather go to other Korean restaurants nearby like...

I don’t usually write reviews but I’m still annoyed and needed to get this off my chest. Went here with two people and we weren’t that hungry, just wanted to eat something nice by sharing 2 portions among three ppl. But apparently, that’s not allowed. They have this ridiculous rule that EVERY person has to order a full portion or you can’t eat there. Like are u kidding me ???!!!!

We told them we only wanted two portions for the three of us, and they straight up said no that we either order three or we can’t eat here. We weren’t trying to be cheap, we just weren’t hungry. and i understand that they needed to keep their business afloat but com on its not that deep. Not everyone shows up starving, and it’s insane to force people to eat more than they want just so you can hit your numbers.

The staff didn’t even seem surprised — they clearly deal with people pushing back on this all the time, which makes it even more insane that they haven’t changed it. It made the whole place feel unwelcoming and honestly kind of money grabby. We left without eating because what’s the point of staying somewhere that doesn’t respect its customers

I get that running a business is hard, but so is being treated like you're just a walking bill. absolutely not coming back, and I’ll be warning people about this...

We used to love this place. And by that, it was our GO TO place for kbbq in 2021/2022.

How quickly this emotion has left us to become: ain't coming back unfortunately.

The prices were jacked up. The portion of the cold buckwheat noodles were shrunk so badly that it's 19$ for a bowl of noodles that only took 5 mouthfuls to finish - half an egg, some cucumber and some pear strips. Wow.

The meats were NOTHING to shout about - quality is different, not going to say drop as it's no Michelin star resto to begin with.

The rice was JASMINE rice! They didn't even bother to use cheap short grain rice! Very disappointed.🤔

The usual helpings of leafy veg were also said to be "finished" but we constantly asked and finally got some served to us.

What's most disturbing is that they decided to not give the dipping salt until we requested and it's only 1 portion but wait, there's more disappointment, rather than soaking it in sesame seed oil, it was PLAIN PEANUT OIL.🥴

The end of meal cider/vinegar drink was also not served. 🙄

So, I say: AIN'T Coming back.

Mr Kim, either you are too confident or you have slipped, you used to be very particular about your service and your food. You were always making sure that your patrons were given GOOD AUTHENTIC K food.

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