Daeho Kalbijjim & Beef Soup — Restaurant in Concord

tl;dr: one of the worst meals that I’ve had in recent memory from a value perspective. if you come here, stick to the kalbi-jjim and don’t get the other things on the menu

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okay, so we’ve tried their famous kalbi-jjim at the SF location. it’s on the pricier side, but it’s genuinely good! so I can’t really complain about it

we were excited to see that a new location had opened in Concord. we saw that they had kalguksu on the menu, which is apparently unique to this location. we were looking forward to it, and we came with a friend

unfortunately, they messed up our order twice. our friend was served the wrong kind of rice, and they served us a kalguksu with no noodles. it was literally just broth and clams and some meat. server seemed super unfamiliar with the menu when we asked about it and had to check with the kitchen.

they sent us a corrected kalguksu after 10 min or so, but the dish was very mid. ratio of noodles to clams and meat felt totally off — I was fishing for noodles and struggled to get them in each bite. moreover, the noodles weren’t very tasty, and I presume that they weren’t actually made on site

I would have felt a lot better if they had comp’d the meal or even just the kalguksu, but they didn’t do that. instead, they were overly apologetic to the point of awkwardness.

anyway, I don’t plan to come again. if you decide to come, stick to the kalbi-jjim if you...

Big disappointment. Would recommend the daeho location in SF Japantown over this. Tho honestly now I'll be hard pressed to return to any Daeho.

Servers messed up our orders not once but twice. First, we were served white rice instead of purple, literally 2 mins after we ordered purple from the same person.

Second, kalguksu dish came without noodles. When we asked the server about this, she said that some kalgutsu dishes come without noodles. Absolutely blew my mind. Kalgutsu in Korean literally means knife cut noodles. Either the menu is completely wrong/a horrible misrepresentation of Korean food or the server is extremely unknowledgeable about the cuisine where they work. Another server had to come to apologize and confirm that the dish should have had noodles.

The food overall was mid. Sure, it's cool seeing the flame on the cheese with daeho's classic dish. But, their other dishes are horrible. The kalgutsu noodles looked not at all knife cut, and something that came out of a box from ranch 99 next door.

After the food service issues, the staff became uncomfortably close and attentive to our table. Felt like fake service. Very awkward and weird experience. I would have instead preferred a discount for messing up our dishes, but no, fake service and smiles. It was clearly just for our table too.

Will definitely...

I’m a big fan of Daeho in San Mateo and Milpitas. Glad that they open a new location in Concord. However, I had a bad experience here with their customer service. Joined waitlist with a party of 8 person before 30 minutes, got there on time but never got the seat. Stand up for almost 40 minutes with 2 babies and a toddler under the cold weather. Asked the front desk lady again and she told us 25-30 minutes more even though we checked in and wait for 40 minutes already. She should’ve told us from the beginning, so we don’t have to wait, we can go to other restaurants instead of waiting like that. They keep taking other parties who were after us. We got upset and left. After 10 minutes, the Daeho’s manager (Tony) who was calling us to apologize for their bad service and offer us to comeback next time to see him. Thank you and appreciate that, but we don’t think we are coming back. We would rather drive to Milpitas or SF locations for a better service. They need to learn for their mistakes. Folks, go to TANGJIP which is near by. They have better food and...