Kimchi Mama — Restaurant in Asbury Park

I am never the type to review a restaurant but when you have an experience like this, it’s entirely necessary. Let me start and say man this food was really really incredible. The stone bowls we all ordered were very tasty, contrary to what my group was saying, everything we ate was incredible in my opinion—But my god the service was unbelievably, unreasonably, poor. Some of the poorest service I have experienced in my entire life. However, I do not want to blame the staff as it appeared to me that one person was running the entire operation. We waited one hour and fifteen minutes for our meal and at first we thought it may be the “stone bowls” that was the issue, but we started seeing every other person get served around us (even people that ordered stone bowls). Out of respect to the woman running around the tables, I didn’t want to grill her and ask about the state of our food. Eventually the food finally came but there was no apology, no altering of the check, no explanation why our order took so long. Is it my own fault for not asking? I don’t know. Regardless, it was extremely unpleasant waiting for such a long amount of time. Again, it was one woman so it is hard for me to complain about this, but at no point was there any asking about how the food was or if we needed refills or any friendly interaction. I had to refill my water at the water cooler multiple times because if I hadn’t, we would not have been able to drink anything. I digress, the food was incredible in my opinion but this was hands down the worst service I have ever had in a restaurant in all of my years on this earth. I do not hold this against the staff or the facility, I guess the restaurant is just understaffed, but if I’m ever ordering again I’m getting takeout. And let me not scare you away from going. The food is incredible and although I didn’t meet the “Kimchi Mama,” apparently she is a very kind lady. Also the environment and ambience is very beautiful. But please be weary of the quality of service in this establishment. If anyone that works here runs the Google account please respond because I would love to know what made our dinner into a 2 hour excursion. I am not mad! I just want answers haha, the bidet was literally awesome btw, almost made the whole thing worth it....

TL;DR received wrong order multiple times vegetarian meal had pork in it never got appetizers waitress didnt know or recognize the food man delivering food couldnt tell us what the item was

Full version This was the worst dinning experience of my life. The restaurant is cute, and the staff seemed friendly, especially the hispanic lady who cleared our table, but thats the best I can do for Pros. A friend and I sat down, ordered 5 items, I'm vegetarian and had been my whole life, I asked the waitress who was a young female if there was meat, fish or eggs in the food I ordered, she was very soft spoken and not well knowledgeable about the food, we ultimately ordered two appetizers, two entrees and a bubble tea using the Korean names on the menu (my friend was very familiar with Korean food), we asked to make my food without egg. A man brought out a dish, we asked what it was, and he didnt understand us, my friend thought he heard the man speak mandarin, so he spoke to the man in mandarin, still didnt understand, after a bit he went to the waiter who confirmed that was not our food. This happened again, but we were told it was my order, and later something else was placed in front of my friend that was not what he ordered, when he told the waitress, this time using the english name she realized his dish and it seemed like she put in the wrong order, so we waited while they started to make his order. Finally we got both orders, after a few sips of my stew, I found pork in it, I have been vegetarian my whole life, and despite the initial long convo with the waitress I got a dish with pork! When I told her theres pork in my vegetarian stew she just said "oh" took it away (I did not want it remade, i did not want any food from them). She didn't apologize or even care that the mistake was made. We never even got our appetizers, there was no explanation why, I thought she misunderstood because I asked about the meat fish and eggs, but she told us one didnt have any of the three and the other just had egg only and so we said that was fine, but she never read back the order, so I assumed she thought we didnt want it and didnt put it in...until we got the bill where they tried to charge us for an appetizer we never received. She did take it off when i...

The first thing I asked when the banchan came out and I tasted the kimchi was if they made it in house. The waiter proudly stated that they made it fresh "every morning". That was my first red flag. I asked this of course because it lacked any real flavor and clearly hadn't been given sufficient time to ferment.

Everyone in my party ordered something different. I ordered the beef bibimbap in the stone pot. It's a staple Korean dish, and a go-to for me that I've enjoyed in many Korean restaurants in Los Angeles and in Asia. This was the first time I encountered it served with a sunny side up egg rather than a raw egg.

When the waiter presented this to me and I asked why the egg was cooked, he was shocked "Raw egg is bad for you. You can't eat raw egg". I said that the egg cooks in the stone pot as you stir it in once served. He said "Oh, the pot isn't hot".

What?

Sure enough, the pot was room temperature, and the food inside equally tepid. Instead of delicious crispy rice at the bottom and fluffy rice at the top, I was disgusted to encounter a kind of "rice mush" with random bits of flavorless beef and vegetable about. I did not eat it. As I was with people who had never enjoyed any other Korean food before and they seemed to be enjoying the experience, I made no further complaint and just didn't eat my meal.

Others at the table offered me samples of their food which not only were the entrees not served at proper temperature, but lacked the sufficient spice heat to be considered authentic Korean food.

The people who run this establishment were very polite, so I do feel bad panning this restaurant. Still, if you like Korean food, you should know that you will not like...