Emonae Korean Restaurant — Restaurant in Cascade Charter Township

One star for the staff who were pleasant, but in all honesty— if you’ve eaten real Korean food from your family cooking it/actual food in South Korea, you will be highly disappointed with this food! It’s the worst I’ve eaten in the U.S. as well— some people on here are saying it’s authentic, but it doesn’t capture the true flavors of Korea. They try, but it’s a very cheap try. The first thing I will note is that they serve on plastic dish ware, even the tea cups are plastic, I find this cringeworthy and very cheap. The side dishes served of 3 different kimchi were poor in taste and quality and small in size, especially for the prices here. On to the main dishes— the bibimbap was consisting mostly of rice a small amount of vegetable and beef, the beef was decent tasting— overall not happy with it. The champong was lacking in spice and flavor! It was hard to finish it, even when I had not eaten the day prior and half the next day— usually food tastes great even if it’s bad after a day and a half of not eating. They also put cut cabbage in it and it’s very off putting, not a lot of vegetables or seafood in the champong, just a lot of noodle and flavorless broth. Their drink selection is low as far as children’s Korean style drinks, they have one carbonated yogurt drink for kids and it’s not pleasant. Menu is also very lacking. Looking over at the tables with the BBQ was a very sad sight in terms of Korean BBQ with the tiny amount of side dishes and hardly any vegetables and rice to eat the meats with, you never see this at true Korean BBQs, they serve endless vegetables with their meats! If you want a Korean BBQ experience, this is the very cheapest and tasteless form of it, and they charge you more than it’s worth. Another sad sight was the fish tank had no air for the fish and they were forced to get it from the top of the tank. We will never go there again, hopefully some true Korean Chefs come to Grand Rapids to show the city what real Korean food tastes like, not a cheap imitation, all the people who are Korean or have been to Korea for more than a few weeks will understand this review, I’ve seen other Korean reviews stating the same. Also, the owner seemed pretty nice but the waitress was not very friendly, very short tempered, and seems to get annoyed easily. She’s also not Korean, Korean people are generally more respectful and polite to customers and people. In Korea they don’t tip and the servers are very quiet, polite, fast, and very clean. This restaurant isn’t clean to a Koreans standard, not polite or highly respectful, and their service is so slow and unclean. Please don’t let this place make you think this is a true Korean experience, and the Americans who are on here saying it’s authentic have most likely never went to South Korea! And obviously...

Don't let this place ruin your view on Korea or Korean food.

In Korea we don't tip, so I didn't tip because of my horrible experience below.

As a Korean I was excited to hear about a Korean restaurant opening up with Korean BBQ. My wife and I went in excited but that excitement quickly died down. Like many of the reviews here, the service is terrible and the food tasted like someone made it from a cookbook. I've been spoiled by my mom, aunts and grand mom's cooking, as well as any street vendor or any mom and pop restaurants in Korea. I tried their ramen and bibimbap and didn't even come close to the taste and flavors of what they should have been.

My experience with my wife was somehow very similar to my friends experiences. The appetizer we ordered went to some other table that was seated after us but we could tell the server knew them as she greeted them with hugs and continued the conversation with them at their table. We ended up telling her to cancel our appetizer order and to just bring our entrees. This is after 40mins of waiting for our appetizer. The manager came and apologized for the wait as we told him what happened and gave us a free egg roll or two. Entree came out after almost an hour of no food and only spotty refills. Having had no lunch or breakfast any food tasted good but after I actually focused on individual flavors it quickly became bland and monotonous.

This may just be review from one person but numerous of my half Korean half American friends did not like it at all either.

If you want legitimate Korean food make it yourself or go to Seoul Market and get their Cafe food and you will absolutely not be disappointed. I really wanted to like emonae but I'd have to hide the fact I'm a Korean.

EDIT/Response to owners reply: it has been at least a month or two since our experience. I won't know if the service may or may not have improved but our first visit is hard to forget and living out in Holland, it was a decent drive to eat out. The food was half decent but I do prefer the taste from Seoul market personally and so does my wife. Our experience may have been a fluke but like I mentioned before, my friends have had similar experience with the service being spotty at best. The compensated dish may have not been egg rolls but we definitely saw our appetizer that was ordered go to a different table and we had to wait 40mins just for the appetizer and our waitress had to ask us again for what appetizer we had ordered which after that question we decided to cancel the appetizer order. I do hope the service improves and wish you the...

Terrible customer service from the owner/manager. 1st- Would not let us use the gift card we got for Christmas that someone paid cash for.... could not use toward tipping the waitress. Waitress did not even bring us the bill or inform us to go up to the register till we flagged her over to our table and we were the only customers in the building. Service was slow. It was our first time there. We had to ask a different waitress to explain to us info about the food and the proper way to cook it. It was suppose to be all you can eat and we kept having to flag the waitress down to get her to bring us more as each plate she brought got smaller and smaller. By the last time a different person brought us more meat as we were waiting to cook it and irritated at the crappy service we only ended up eating half and wanting to leave. Asked for boxes for the rest and the owner comes out yelling at us! Telling us we have to pay for our leftovers and telling us we should know how much food to eat so their was no leftovers! I was beyond disappointed with my first experience. They have AMAZING food however the crappy customer service makes me not want to go back. It's too bad cause if they were not so rude I would have never gotten on here to say anything but the owner had no sense to keep a customer coming back. Don't have an all you can eat advertisement if your going to lecture your customers and give crappy service after the first plate you serve them. Every plate after the first one was barely enough for my 22 month old son. No customer should have to feel like they are inconveniencing you to keep flagging you down for an all you can eat...