Sarang Restaurant - Authentic Korean BBQ — Restaurant in London

Extremely unhappy and upset with the discrimination and prejudice against my autistic daughter!! Will definitely not be coming back again!

I had dinner with some friends here couple of days ago (21st Feb). I was with my daughter who is autistic. She is very picky in what food she likes and so I had to buy some McDonalds for her to eat, whilst we were having our dinner.

A while later a waitress came up to our table and rudely explained that we were not allowed food from outside whilst dining there.

I, therefore put the McDonalds away and tried to get my daughter to have the food that we ordered. Unfortunately, she was not having it. So, I had to sneakily provide the McDonalds for her to eat whilst we were having our dinner.

The waitress, then came up to us again and in an extremely rude manner and rolling her eyes, told us this is not allowed. I explained that my daughter is autistic and sorry that she is very picky with her food. I explained that she knows we have McDonalds so started complaining that I would give it to her. I explained that she would have an outburst which could disturb the other customers. The waitress, then proceeded to say “have you asked the other customers if they minded to be disturbed?” – I mean what sort of a question is that!! She said “outside food is banned from here”. I asked, so if babies were to come, are they not allowed to have baby food? She said “yes, baby food is also not allowed here” – This is simply ridiculous!

I, then approached the front desk to ask to speak to the manager and the lady explained that the manager was not in. The waitress, then approached us again and just kept repeating “outside food is not allowed”. I asked her “do you want us to leave?” to which she responded, “outside food is not allowed”. This got me extremely upset and so, I felt I had to leave with my daughter and left our friends there to continue with their dinner. It turns out that we spent approx. £90 for the meal! Surely as customer with a special case, any normal person, would be understanding of our situation!!

A day later, I was still extremely upset with this discrimination, so I decided to call to speak to the manager. They put the phone down as soon as they hear I wanted to speak with a manager. I called again and explained I needed to make a complaint to the manager, which they responded the manager is not in. I said, in that case I will just have to make a complaint online. To which, they said. OK.

Hope you continue trading like this, because before long you will no longer have any customers! I’m now considering taking this further to make a complaint to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, so they can pay...

This was one of the toughes review I had to write... As the taste of the food, the staffs and the price were definitely deserving of 5 stars. However, we had a few issues...

1. My Seafood Sundubu chigae (seafood tofu stew) although tasted so authentic and delivious... it had cold tofu in a pipping hot bowl of soup. I can understand that they mus the busy and probably just put in the cold tofu, hoping the soup would heat it up fast enough, but it didn't. But the staffs were really nice and helped us changed to a new one. We usually don't do this but there's no way we could eat the tofu cold in that manner.
2. We ordered this cod fish tofu soup (Mein tang?) And the soup was delicious as well. But... The cod fish was so so so hard that it's hard to even tesr it apart with our teeth or chopsticks. At first we weren't sure if it was just simply overcooked and thus we had to ask the staff to take a look and again, they brought it in and replaced with another. But she did mention that the new one may still be equally tough as well, so I guess it's just the fish they used? Or the way they cook it? I am honestly clueless... All I can say is that if cod fish were so hard, no one will ever eat fish and chips using this fish for sure.

But then again, all the waitresses/staffs were great and 1 of them was even very cheerful and makes my day just by hearing her serve others. We also ordered 1 portion of the BBQ pork belly which was delicious too and value for money in my opinion. So actually it could have been perfect and if I ever get the chance again, I will be back for sure! Just not ordering the cod fish soup would do for me. The tofu, I hope it's a one off incident.

So while giving it a 3 stars, I feel bad for the restaurant.

And finally they served us some complimentary ice cream with oranges, which was a nice gesture. We arent sure if that was due to the 2 reasons above or its served to everyone else. We do appreciate that alot and was tempted to give it another star for that. But still, I guess for a top notch restaurant, the above 2 incidents should not have happened anywhere in the world.

I have said this earlier, but I will...

If you go here and order the Korean bbq DO NOT ORDER THE CHICKEN!!! I went there and ordered two set As that come with beef and chicken. When I went to Korea me and my partner literally lived off of Korean bbq, however anywhere we went in Korea we would never find a place that served chicken there would only be beef and pork options, we thought this was weird but we was fine with just eating beef every time because it was so nice! The difference was in Korea most of the meat is really thin so it cooked really fast, and you would cook the meat yourself so you would cook it to your own personal preference. However when we came here the beef on the platter was quite thick and wasn’t the best quality and to be honest was chewy! However the chicken is the PROBLEM! On the platter they had chicken thighs whole when it came to them cooking the chicken (because you don’t cook your own food here the waitresses do it for you) they put half the thighs on the bbq and these took so long to cook because they was so big, this was the first problem however the real problems started when one waitress came and cut up the chicken and said it was ready however it was NOT it was still pink so we asked to cook it more so they did and they cut it smaller. Waited a bit longer finally the chicken was looking cooked, she said it was ready so we started eating it but then a different waitress came and put the rest of the raw chicken on the grill with the cooked meat so now we had to wait even longer because she had mixed all the cooked and raw chicken together. The chicken was taking even longer to cook this time as the bbq was way too over crowded, the waitress then came back cut up the new chicken thighs and they was visibly still RAW AF and told us it was ready to eat!! So in the end we just left the chicken. Long story short I now have food poisoning from this restaurant so thanks for the really much...