Saemaul Restaurant Hongdae Seogyo Branch — Restaurant in Seoul

Last yesr 2023 Nov when we came. We enjoyed it alot and recommened to our families and friends. Thie year 2024 , One of the BBQ pit dosent cook well (after 10mins) and I understand there is a language barrier and took 4 staffs to understand what we r trying to tell them even with translate. Finally 1 staff changed the charcoal (unwillingly) and ended up spitting oil and a small fire started even without cooking. One particular female staff saw it and instead of helping us yet gave us a very attitude stare. .Finally 1 nice male staff saw the fire (without any food on the bbq plate and something was buning inside) and wanted to change the charcoal which we tell him dont need to as we r leaving..(appetite spoiled) Food wise the cuts was diff from 2023. Anyway instead of speaking to the manager(the nice staff) we decided to jus pay leave without finishing our food. Food cost 300k Won and we asked, “did we do anything wrong to deserve such service”? .. You only need a bad service plus a rotten apple to tarnish a nice place. Will not return...

I’ve been to many korean barbecue places here in Hongdae and this one might be the worst place on my ranking. The food is like any other place and their service towards foreigners are the worst. I came here with my family and we were sat on different tables but right next to each other. They should’ve known from then that we were together. We asked for 2 sets; one set on each table. They ended up combining both sets into one and put it on one table. The amount given did NOT look like the amount that was displayed on the menu, given that we ordered 2 SETS but it looked like one. They also kept insisting on taking one of the tables’ fire away, as if we weren’t going to cook on both. Everytime we would be done cooking one plate of meat, they would ask to take the fire away even though we weren’t done. I don’t even think they knew that both of our tables were together. Overall, their attitude and service was not that amazing. I would recommend other places than this one; the line outside...

I'll go straight to the point. Pork belly was okay. Don't expect anything special. The best beef (it's stated on the menu) has a lot of fat and not much meat, so come here if that's what you like. There's a station for mushrooms and vegetables, it's 1,000 per person and refillable.

Service is bad though. What really ticked me off though, was that the waiter came after our meats were cooked and we were in the middle of grilling our veggies and mushrooms (you typically start with meats first) and removed our fire. He could clearly see that we were indeed, not done.

He left with the fire and we were left in confusion. Our mushrooms sat there cold and obviously uncooked. Had to request someone to come back so we can finish what we took from the mushroom station.

Not forgetting that we had to ask thrice to get our rice order.

I'm leaving this place after to buy fishcakes from the nearest ahjumma stall. Needless to say, won't be coming back for subpar food and...