Seoul Taco — Restaurant in Chicago

I am not sure about the food quality, but as far as the staff I couldn’t feel more disrespected than I felt today, April 10, 2020.

I arrived at the restaurant to pick up an online order two minutes after the order was due.

The restaurant did set up a plastic shelf outside the inner door, and keep that door locked at all times due to COVID precautions. At first glance I did not see my order at the shelf.

Maybe two minutes later a light skin employee with a hat came outside the door to place some more bags at the shelf. I’ve tried to inquire him of how long he estimated my order would take to get ready. He was very rude and said “if your order is not at the shelf they are working on it”. This is was not my question, but ok, I kept waiting.

Maybe after around 15 minutes of wait, and maybe ten another bags in the shelf I inquired him again, and he limited to say the order was coming.

40 minutes passed by and every time I inquired he answered: “it’s coming up”.

After around one hour of wait I needed to ask him a little harsher since my politeness was apparently not working. For the first time, maybe out of a little of common sense in his mind, he decided to question the kitchen staff about my order, being responded they did not have any order with that name to be prepared. As it might be imaginable it was completely overwhelming that answer.

During the whole time what I noticed was the whole staff with no mask at all, laughing, joking and listening to loud music while preparing other people’s food, and the total lack of respect with the customer that was there waiting for around one hour.

I’ve tried to complain with some sort of manager, but couldn’t even figure out who it was, and to me no sort of attention was directed whatsoever.

Disrespect and lack of professionalism is everything I could notice in this visit. This is my second google review in a lifetime, I really don’t like doing that, but today I felt obligated to show my frustration so this maybe get to some...

Some of my group (including me) waited almost half an hour for our food, and after that half hour they called us up and told us they'd run out of ingredients for part of our orders and needed us to pick alternatives.

They didn't have any of the fried rice left so we had to pick other rice (to their credit, they did bring us the fried rice later - when we were almost finished with our meals, so we were just left eating mostly the rice by itself).

They ran out of the pork so two of my group had to choose a different meat (again, they informed us of this 20-30 minutes after we ordered).

A bit after my one friend had to change his order, he saw what he thought was his food sitting in their prep area; after five minutes, he finally went up to ask about it and they gave it to him, as apparently it had been completed and was left to just sit there.

I also thought they were stingy with the bulgogi on my gogi bowl. My other friend got the same thing and there was considerably more on it.

The food was still pretty good, but the service was unacceptable, especially for people coming for lunch during the week. I'm not completely writing them off because my friends said it hadn't been that bad the last time they'd gone, but if you do come here then be aware that it might take considerably longer to get your order than you...

The tofu Gogi is laughably bad. I spent close to $15 on just the bowl and a tortilla on the side, and got a massive quantity of dry, bland, plain rice, a handful of spring mix, and a medium quantity of tofu. The tofu was well spiced, but it was not saucy, so it was overwhelmed by the bland rice. The Gochujang sauce tasted super salty and like they took it straight from the container, rather than mixing it with anything and creating an actual sauce. It's more of a paste. At first I couldn't even find it in the bowl, it was just placed in a blob in the corner. I couldn't taste any of the sesame vinaigrette that was supposed to be in the bowl. The food was edible, but not particularly enjoyable.

The bowl is vegan if you remove the egg. This bowl has basically no flavor or toppings other than the protein + spring mix. The kimchi here is not vegan (contains fish), so switching out the white rice for kimchi fried rice would not be an option.

Pros would be good ambience (funky/modern/Korean) and good service (The workers were somewhat knowledgeable about what on the menu is vegan). Props for the portion size (if you like massive quantities of plain rice)

If you want actually good Korean food at a cheaper price, I would recommend Bibibop Asian Grill...