KOU-Korean BBQ of Utah — Restaurant in Midvale

I think I finally found the best Korean barbecue here in Utah. The experience at this restaurant from start to finish was incredible.

We came here after a strenuous hike and tennis session, so we were extremely hungry and ready for some food.

You can join the waitlist on yelp on the day of your visit, so make sure you do that when you are close to here! We were quickly seated within five minutes of arriving.

One part that I really appreciated was that the staff continually checked on us throughout our meal so that we could order more dishes. They also kept our waters full to the brim at all times! Customer service was perfect.

Now for the appetizers and side dishes. As soon as you sit down, you have a small variety of banchan (sides). You get a sweet soy sauce, a spicy Sambal sauce, and salt. You also get kimchi, spicy cucumber, and pickled radishes.

The dipping sauces were all perfect and exactly what I needed. Make sure to ask for a bottle of sesame oil! The real trick is pouring the sesame oil in the dipping container that has just salt. The sesame oil and salt combination is unbelievable.

The kimchi was great. Not too fermented, and the balance of sweet and spicy and tartness was in exact proportions. The spicy cucumber was fine and what we expected. My favorite however, was the pickled radishes. These were sweet and crunchy, and we ordered an extra bowl of those during our meal.

We ordered some other appetizers of plain rice, japchae (sweet potato noodles), garlic and japenos, lettuce wraps, and Korean fried chicken. The japchae was very flavorful and warm and filled with thinly sliced veggies. The Korean fried chicken was nicely fried pieces of dark meat covered in a sweet and spicy sauce. The freshly sliced garlic and jalapeños are excellent to throw on the grill throughout your meal to have a strong bite of flavor whenever you want to change it up.

We then get to the meats.

We started off with the prime boneless beef steak. This steak was pretty fast to cook after we cut it up, and it was so tender, fatty, and juicy. It didn’t need any dipping sauces, however we were able to nicely enjoy the different sauces with it.

Next came the beef brisket. This is a staple of any Korean barbecue experience. The beef brisket also had a good balance of fat and meat, and the way it cooks allows for a lot of sauce to cling to it when you dip it. It was excellent in a lettuce wrap with some pickled veggies and rice.

Next we ordered beef belly and pork belly. The pork belly was really fatty and melted in your mouth as you ate it. However, the real star of the entire meal was the beef belly. It had the same flavor as beef brisket, however this was much fattier and much more juicy! It barely requires any effort to eat it! I would order this on its own and be so happy.

We finished off our meats by ordering galbi (marinated short ribs) and beef bulgogi. Galbi was excellent - super tender and so much flavor from the marinade. The bulgogi also really nice, as the marinade denatured all of the proteins of the meat, allowing it to break apart with just the slightest touch.

The last item on their menu is called papico, which is like a chocolate ice cream that is inside a plastic container. It was really fun trying something I had never tried before, and this Korean chocolate ice cream was a fun experience. You have to try to bite the plastic container to get the ice cream.

The all you can eat option at this place is $31.99, or you can order items à la carte. Personally, the all you can eat option is the best value since you can have the most variety.

I absolutely love this Korean barbecue place, and it easily takes the number one spot for the several places I’ve been to here in Utah. Yes, this is not technically in Salt Lake City, rather in Midvale, however it is a short 15 minute drive from downtown Salt Lake City, and it...

Oh my gosh. This is the first time me and my dad have had KBBQ and I nod have a new favorite resturaunt because this id genuinely AMAZING. First off, they give you this absolutley BANGER soy sauce that is apparently a special recipie from the restaurant (im a bit sad that I wont be able to get some from a store but tbh that just means there's even more effort there) and they give you that soy sauce with chili flakes as well, and some sugar or salt (i didnt end up trying it, it skipped my mind, but im sure it was rlly good) for me and my dad, 2 people, it was about 90 dollars with tip and tax on the all you can eat buffet thingy- now that sounds bad, but actually, for what youre getting, its amazing. Their meats are super high quality, and the grill at our table was completely clean, which is actually a bit surprising because they have got to be very difficult to keep clean, from me own experience with cooking meat on ports and pans. They also gave us some very goods rice, it was the perfectly sticky kind and it went wonderfully with the meats. If I had to choose the best thing we had there, id say it was either the sliced beef, or the spicy beef bolgogi (im bad at spelling sorry if I butchered that) although in my mind the spicy one wasn't super duper spicy, It was still very enjoyable and did fulfill my need for spice that day. They had us use chopsticks, and I have alot of experience with them, so it was fine, but I will say that if you dont have much chopsticks skills, that you should look up how to use them, and basic etiquette just to be safe. I also like that the place in general wasn't too loud. Ive been to many restaurants that blast crappy Kanye west and stuff all over their speakers for 'atmostphere' but this place wasn't like that. Their music wasn't neccisarily my taste, but it was definitely better than alot of places, plus, they didnt make it too loud. And this isnt even really a thing with the actual restaurant, but I will say that we got there before the lunch rush, and it was very nice and quiet, which is really good because people in my family get very overstimulated easily. The atmosphere was really good, and the staff there were great, and the guy at our table explained what the sauces were to me, and also explained at the start how to actually do the actual cooking and eating and such when we asked what the actual deal of the place was. I will also say that visually, it was a very pretty restaurant. In general, if I wasn't super broke, I would be going here every week....

Editing this review from 5 to 2 for good reason. First off, this used to be our favorite Korean Grill/Restaurant. We would dine here with friends on average 3-4 times a year. But looks like their Customer Service has just gone bad. We waited for over an hour which was ok considering that we came in dinner time and with large crowd by the door. Almost after an hour of eating, one guy (tall guy, appeared to be Korean) came over and told us we need to leave. In his own words '.. we need you guys to leave right now .....' and with that look as if we did something wrong. We were very confused at first cause we thought, maybe there's a fire or emergency, were we making too much noise (too much laughter on our conversation that time), or did we do something illegal or offended someone? I asked him why and he just left and sent someone else. The gentleman he sent was very polite and explained to us that they have a 90-minute time limit and said we can leave if we were done since there's a party of 30 waiting in line. So we just cut our dinner short, leaving a lot of food that we ordered 😒 Looking back, we just realized that tall guy was just very rude. I would understand it if it he's got broken english and just failed to deliver the message in a right way but no, he has got perfect english that we were all shocked with what he said and the way he said it. I really think he doesn't belong in any customer-facing type of industry or this will just definitely ruin the business. I am leaving 2 stars for the server and the busser (they were actually good and just affected by overall experience) but we will never come back here and will definitely spread this bad and sad experience with other foodie friends. Or maybe we will try again once we learn that they get rid of that one...