Sinabro — Restaurant in Milwaukee

I went on 3/28/24 at 8:18 pm and was told that the kitchen closes at 8:30 pm. I pointed out the hours of operation end on a Thursday at 9:00 pm but was told that the kitchen closed at 8:30 pm. There were no diners there when I arrived. It looked like the kitchen staff were eating dinner. The next evening on 3/29/24 I went at 7:30 pm and was told there would be over a one hour wait for service because the kitchen was running behind. The place was packed. But I saw one couple leave after waiting for 2 hours for food as they still had not been served. We waited about 2 hours and ordered tea and a latte while waiting which cost a total of $9. We did not have two pairs of chopsticks and so we had to wave and get a young woman who passed us to get a pair for the two of us. There were also no napkins at our table and we had to request those. Then we ordered the ribs, a rice cake noodle in black bean sauce, the beef ramen and a seafood ramen and the spicy chicken. There was no meat on the 2 ribs. There was just some sweet and sour sauce and two bones with a fried coating. The rice cake noodle in black bean sauce was chewy and tasted as expected for black beans. That was probably the best dish. The beef ramen was a disaster. It was mostly ramen like you get in an Asian store for instant ramen and sprinkles of ground beef. It was mostly noodles in a bowl and not much beef. It looked like a generous portion only because it was just ramen in a bowl of soup. If you decide to get this, I would suggest that you share that because it's just ramen. The seafood ramen was spicy even though the menu suggested it would not be spicy because there was no hot red pepper logo beside it. I took one bite and had to flush the mouthful with lots of cold water. I returned the seafood ramen and they did give me a refund. It was so full of ramen and so little seafood that I can't even report on how much crab and shrimp there was as I didn't see much in there. The spicy chicken was really hot and my guest and myself could only taste a bite and forget about the rest. After waiting 2 hours to get this food at the price of $78, I would say this place is a waste of money and that you can cook it yourself at home with a good Korean cookbook such as "The Korean Vegan" cookbook by Joanne Lee Molinaro which was a 2022 James Beard Foundation award winner and some ramen from any Asian grocery store around here.

They are not a Korean hotpot place. So don't go there if you're looking for that. They also have no salads and no vegetable based dishes except for the edamame. For authentic, try cooking it yourself with a good cookbook or...

I ordered the Kimchi Dumpling Stew menu description a “traditional Korean stew simmered with Kimchi, kimchi dumpling, pork belly, tofu, rice cakes, zucchini, carrots, scallions, and glass noodles”. Unearthed one tiny 0.3 oz piece of pork (not pork belly)in the dish. Laughed about it with dining partner, brought it to the attention of the server, and requested more pork. Ten minutes later the unseasoned broth got cold and the server set a small plate in front of me and said “the chef told me to bring this to you”. It was another 0.3 piece of pork; that was it. What seemed like a humorous mistake was suddenly a humiliating experience for a reasonable ask based on the menu description. Asked for the check, five minutes later it has not been brought to us so we just went up to the host station to pay. The bartender was up there, explained she was also in charge and apologized. This apology was immediately negated by her trying to reason that they don’t actually have pork belly- the menu was wrong and was in the process of being reprinted to remove pork belly from the menu. Incidentally- several other dishes on the menu have pork belly listed. Substituting with an appropriate amount of a different protein or informing me of this ahead of ordering would have been appropriate and reasonable. Things go wrong at restaurants, servers forget things, a dish isn’t prepared correctly- no biggie; mistakes happen. Instead the chef chose a deliberate action to humiliate a customer. The person in charge did make the excellent decision to remove the meal from the bill. I appreciated this however I don’t go out to dinner to get insulted and a free meal; I wanted a delicious dinner and was happy to pay for it. As someone that has worked kitchens and in server roles I am shocked by the inexcusably terrible treatment I received. Tipped the servers on what would have been the full bill since they clearly felt terrible about what transpired and it certainly was not their fault. I left with my 0.3 oz piece of pork so I could weigh it at home and let you all know about the awful experience waiting for you if you decide...

My husband and I are both Korean and we’ve been on the hunt for some Korean comfort food. We arrived before 5pm on a Sunday, definitely offpeak, and the restaurant was at least half empty for the duration of our meal. Servers were friendly and attentive, but the kitchen was very slow.

The Seoul Beef Ramen (설렁탕 라면) was accurately described, beef is thinly sliced and broth seasoned correctly (albeit heavy on the black pepper).

The “spicy jjambbong” ramen (짬뽕 라면), however tasted like Shin ramen - adding two shrimp, pieces of squid, and one mussel. It was neither jjambbong nor actually spicy. It also took 35(?!) minutes to come out.

As far as banchan (side dishes), a single small plate of cucumber kimchi (오이 소박이) was “complimentary” for the table. The flavor was quite refreshing. When we asked for a refill, though, we found out there’s a $5 upcharge for it. Um. On principle, banchan are typically plural and part of the meal - they are not charged as extra.

I acknowledge that we ordered only a few items off the menu, so our experience may be skewed. But the kitchen is either severely understaffed or inefficient (or both? I noticed over half the other occupied tables were also waiting for their food). No ramen takes 30+ minutes to cook; if it was truly cooking for that long I expect a deeper jjambbong flavor to the seafood broth that was ostensibly lacking in this $19 Shin ramen. As for charging $5 to refill a single plate of kimchi…are the owners deliberately targeting clientele that wouldn’t know any better? Because this is laughable. You won’t attract any Koreans that way (but perhaps that’s the point).

TL;DR - is the food Korean? Korean enough. Does it feel like an authentic Korean restaurant? Nope. If we have the heart and aren’t already hungry when we walk in, we might come back. But the sad reality seems to be that our expectations for Korean comfort food in MKE are too high. How...