BaBbi BaBbi Korean Kitchen | BBQ&More| Dr. phillips — Restaurant in Dr. Phillips

TLDR: A modern, nice Korean restaurant whose downfall is greasy food and a menu that lies about vegetarian options, so ASK BEFORE ORDERING.

Service: The waitstaff was exceptional and we have no complaints about the individuals serving us. In fact, they were very helpful deciphering what on the menu was vegan. I only docked a star because for a nicer restaurant, one expects to be seated and instead it was "grab a menu and sit wherever, I'll be over shortly" which is clearly a direction from management.

Atmosphere: modern, clean, cute, and fun. No complaints.

Food: let's talk menu first. There are a slew of items marked vegetarian and vegan. However, upon asking, the server informed us that all but three items actually have fish sauce, shrimp paste, or other seafood products cooked in them, even when noted as vegan/vegetarian. I defintely worry about fellow veggie lovers just ordering based off menu marking and getting sick from seafood products slipped in. Kid you not, the following items are marked veg, but have seafood products in them:

bap sides - spinach, zucchini, carrot, corn. Kimchi pancake Jjamppong Veg kimbap

Now onto what we can eat: mixed veg pancake, bi bim bap tofu and raddish, and tofu japchae. The pancake was the only item of the three that had a lot of good flavor, but boy... it was more greasy than a large McD's fries. We only ate half and left the rest because the oil was too much. The bi bim bap (one of our favorite dishes normally) was quite bland as well, with the rice being covered in oil. Lastly, the japchae was just basic and I had to get a side of gochujang to make it taste like anything other than oil. See pics for the grease shine.

Improvement recommendations for management: redo the menu with a consolidated and clearly marked list of vegan and vegetarian options (that do NOT include seafood), cut down on the oil, and season your veggies. Just because we don't eat meat doesn't mean we don't like flavor.

EDIT TO RESPOND TO BUSINESS: I'm unsure how to understand the majority of what was written. However, my server talked with the kitchen staff and they told me the ingredients of every dish I mentioned. So if the kitchen is putting the incorrect ingredients into dishes, then they need to be told that. As of today, kitchen staff said they put fish sauce in soups, shrimp paste in all kimchi, and other seafpod products in the other...

I don't claim to know the first thing about authentic Korean food, but if you want something unique and delicious, you have to try BaBbi BaBbi! I was admittedly out of my element and the woman at the register was kind enough to explain the menu and offer suggestions based on my preferences. I ended up ordering the bibimbap (in a hot stone bowl) with kimchi fried rice, bulgogi, lots of fresh veggies and a fried egg... I'll come back to that dish in a moment. They offer complimentary soup when you order a bowl, so I tried the kimchi soup (there was also miso and another option that slipped my mind). It was fantastic! Tangy and spicy, lots of flavor in the broth with nice texture from the cabbage. I also got an order of fried gyoza which were perfect! The order came with 5 (only 4 pictured because I couldn't wait to eat them). My bibimbap came out very soon after the appetizer. This was one of the most amazing dishes I have ever had. A lot of different flavors but they all worked so well together. The hot bowl made the rice nice and crispy, plus amazing fresh veggies! They offer a house sauce that compliments the rest of the dish so well. The bulgogi was incredibly savory. I could not get enough! Actually, if I had any criticism about this place it would only be that they could put a bit more meat in the dish, but really, everything was so wonderful! The staff were attentive and helpful. I had a truly exceptional experience. Give this place a try. If you're not adventurous when going out you can still find something here you will enjoy. They have anything from white rice and chicken to purple rice...

Stopped by there and called for pick up because of the high ratings... The first time is actually nice, but when we called for second time. The front desk literally asked us for credit card number and cvvs because our order was over 50 dollars? The waitress totally forgot the corn cheese that I ordered, but they ordered correctly? One more ridiculous thing, their plastic container was totally broken after I took out from the bag. The manager took our words and say will give back our corn cheese "store credit" after looking to our proof of pictures. Worst service, moderate food, unreasonable forced service fee for a broken plastic container with NO APOLOGIES. Not gonna visit again, and thank you JAMIE. For spelling my name wrong even I spelled 3 times for you.

By the way, per your order, did you make sure that you gave us corn? No matter corn cheese or sweet corn, you ain't giving us nothing related to corn.

What we are looking for, are the APOLOGIES from your store of your services, but not your store credit. In addition, how can we provide our picture as we clean up already? It is hard to put the responsibility to us either.

P.S. You didn't say refund at all in the call. What we heard from you was "store credit under consideration". We don't need your store credit, but your altitude didn't match the 18% "service fee".

One more P.S. Why would you guys deleted our review on Yelp? If you guys did "nothing"...