Obaltan K-BBQ (곱창ㅣ조개구이ㅣ소고기) — Restaurant in Fort Lee

Decent food for price but expect long wait and not great service. We went here because of the Fung Bros Review.

We arrived at 5:30pm for party of 4, scanned the code, the board said 45 min wait. It was 1hr and 20 mins before the app switched from "1 table ahead" to "you are on top of the list". We went inside when the app switched and the host kicked us out immediately saying we would receive a text. We waited outside for about 10 mins, in the cold, before I got tired of waiting and checked again, noticed the host was being very friendly with the party of 4 that seemed to be squeezed ahead of us. That's when we miraculously got a table. So seems you need to actually know someone that works their to get good service. Our table was ignored for the most part, I had to flag down service multiple times.

As for food itself, we ordered the clam sauna and beef combo, and extra order of scallops. Beef Combo: The best thing was the beef, tender and flavorful. Clam Sauna: The clams were the largest I have ever seen, but a bit tough. The shrimp was sweet, nice bounce and fresh. The crab unfortunately was definitely bad, it tasted off, and the 2 poeple in our party that had the crab were violently sick after. If not for the crab, this would have been 3 star review. Scallops in Shell: The scallops were super tiny penny size, and the sauce on top overwhelmed the scallop. Drowned in the spicy mayo that is on top of sushi. Steamed egg was great very fluffy, good broth flavor mixed in with egg. Reminds me of Japanese chawamushi. Kimchi fried rice: love how they let the egg steam around the perimeter of the fried rice, adds a great texture to the fried rice. Don't think we will be going back cause of the food poisoning from the crab, especially since there are so many amazing restaurants...

When my sister suggested this place, it didn’t look like much from the outside and the wait was 30 minutes. However, once we sat down, I realized why everyone was waiting to eat here.

The service was impeccable. Not just because they were attentive to every request and every need, (even the needs, I didn’t know we had, )but because they were knowledgeable about how to cook what, exactly when. If you dine here, you will feel taken care of—especially if Jayden is your server. What I love about the Korean culture is how a sense of collectivist values shows up everywhere, even with the servers at a restaurant. All it takes is one raised finger to get an immediate response from any of the servers that will happily get anything you request. At one point, I heard a costumer say, “this has been the best bbq experience I’ve had.”

The pork combo and the seafood combo were perfect for the four of us. When asked how we know when the clams are done, Jayden replied,”I will leave it here on the side. Don’t worry, I will teach you everything you need to know.” He did teach us everything. From the clam juice he pours into a tray you can later slurp with some scallions and spices to the noodles they make for you with the broth from the seafood pot. I usually take a lot of photos, but honestly, I was enjoying myself too much to every have a chance to take one picture. You should go to see...

We were a party of 7 arrived at a nice Saturday night and the service of this restaurant TOTALLY RUINED our day. The lady at the front told us the wait would be an hour but we waited for 2 hours to be seated, only to find out that they wouldn't even let us grill our meat on our own table (they did not tell us about this when asking us to wait for an hour, which is also a lie. No one told us about this when we were ordering either). We had to wait for them to grill all our meat somewhere else and bring them to us. And then they messed up our order... we ordered pork belly and they brought us pork jowl (the guy didn't even apologize and asked us to "try it and if we like it he would charge us for the jowl instead...we tried and we said we still wanted pork belly. we didn't even say the jowl is bad, and the guy just took the plate with the jowl away, and spent another 30 minutes to give us our pork belly, which portion is also tiny). And the bathroom doesn't even have toilet paper. THIS WHOLE EXPERIENCE IS A JOKE. The whole time no one was apologetic about the situation at all. We felt so scammed and frustrated. I don't understand at all why this place has such good reviews. WE WILL NEVER COME AGAIN AND TELL ALL OUR FRIENDS TO...