HAJU Kitchen — Restaurant in Boston

Ordered bibimbap with beef and it was disappointing. First of all, the mushrooms were rotten and not the Asian shiitake mushrooms in normal Korean bibimbap. But mostly they were rotten and we could taste it! Second, they used ground beef as the meat, not the normal marinated sliced beef or bugolgi beef. And there was very little beef as well- at most one teaspoon of ground beef. We told the server who told the kitchen about the above, and to be fair, they did offer to cook something else and apologized and gave a discount. But we were not hungry anymore. We had already eaten what we can and hoped we would be ok. Also note that there was no Gosari and green Korean spinach in the bibimbap. (This part we did not tell the restaurant, but note that these should be in the traditional Korean bibimbap). After mixing the bibimbap the bowl was mostly rice. So the portions of the meat and vegetables in the dish were kind of skimpy. The extra star is for the good service from our waiter who was apologetic and tried to make things right. It was not his fault and we hope that the owner will make some changes to ensure freshness of ingredients and use some more authentic ingredients in the future. Service was fast...

My first visit here. I am Korean so I know what to expect...usually that is... but one thing I didn't expect is that Haju doesn't serve Kimchee as one of its side dishes... And I didn't ask for it ... because asking if they have kimchee is unheard of... it's like asking if they have salsa at a mexican place... So we ate the entire meal without any kimchee... and at the end of our meal... some white guys came in asked the server if they had kimchee... and guess what... they did! Now, I am puzzled as to why you wouldn't serve kimchee as a side dish at a korean restaurant??? I didn't even think to ask because that is just unheard of.... On other front.. the price is too high for what you get (and don't get).... The same night... Pho Basil next door had 20 minute wait for tables and similar to the Dumpling Palace two doors down.. packed full of people... Haju was 2/3 Empty in the dining room... now I know why.... the value just isn't there. The servers were nice and polite though... but a poorly modeled in terms of a korean restaurant business... I would recommend Seoul restaurant in West End or other korean...

It took a couple of minutes to get seated which was a little odd because one person saw me but just sat there waiting for the other person to help me. The person who waited on me was nice throughout though.

While waiting for my main dish, I was served a single side dish, fish cake, which was very good. Usually, there is more than one side dish at other places though.

The main entree, the bulgogi bibimbap was okay, but it just seemed a little lacking. There is an egg yolk without whites, a small thin layer of ground beef and a variety of vegetables, zucchini, radishes, carrots, cremini mushrooms, and bean sprouts. The rice was good and browned by the stone pot for some nice crispy rice as I had hoped. The (mildly) spicy sauce served on the side definitely helped to add some flavor to the dish.

While the dish I ordered didn't wow me, nothing was bad, so I would consider coming back to try a...