Hahm Ji Bach — Restaurant in New York

I don’t say this lightly, but here we had the worst dining experience in recent memory. I’ve visited dozens of KBBQ joints across the US as well as a few in Seoul and Busan, and none were even close to the misery that is Hahm Ji Bach.

My friends and I were really excited to try a coal Korean BBQ spot after reading so many positive reviews about this restaurant. The few times we had walked past, it looked very busy and had an inviting atmosphere. We considered ourselves lucky when the hostess mentioned there was no wait on an unusually quiet Saturday evening.

However, that’s where the good times ended and the nightmare began. Perhaps due to our small party size of three, we were ushered downstairs to a small windowless basement. This is not an incriminating assessment in and of itself, but very much relevant because the BBQ fumes had absolutely nowhere to dissipate. There was poor ventilation and we nearly suffocated from smoke inhalation an hour later, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Our server was clearly overworked — in general 24 hour venues are understaffed — but everything started out on a friendly enough tone. We were not expecting to be coddled. She recommended we order one meat dish per person, though we decided that at $25-$30 per dish, we would share the thinly sliced beef, an order of pork belly, as well as the glass noodles as an appetizer. Our server later said that our meal only came with two portions of rice, and made it sound like she was doing us a huge favor when we asked for a third. Even the person in our party who spoke Korean to her noticed the poor attitude.

The panchan (side dishes) were nothing to write home about. The steamed egg was burnt through and tasted like charred plastic. When confronted with this, our server insinuated that because it’s “free”, the restaurant doesn’t care about the quality of these dishes. This wouldn’t have bothered me if it hadn’t taken them over 30 minutes to bring out our meats. That’s right, simply to bring out the raw meat took the restaurant a full half hour. Normally this part takes under five minutes at a proper KBBQ joint. The chadulbaeggi (thinly sliced beef) was grisly and unremarkable, not to mention only about 6 ounces of meat - certainly not worth the $31 price tag. It also took them an inordinate amount of time to refill a single side dish of peanuts and anchovies, after I asked about it three times. Don’t expect to get water refills. The waitstaff’s attitude was poor towards each other as well as to all the customers in the downstairs dungeon. They were clearly stressed out and taking it out on the job. There’s rude, and then there’s this lady (“angry ajumma”). She got upset with me for asking about the coal bbq, because apparently they only use coal for select dishes. Finally, the Samgyeopsal (thick pork belly) was indeed the highlight of the meal, though after feeling abused, exhausted and confused, we weren’t really able to enjoy it.

The basement filled up with smoke towards the end and the large party next to us begged the waitstaff to pay upstairs. We got out as soon as we could, but I’ll never get those two hours of my life back.

TL;DR: stay away from this place. it’s understaffed, overpriced, unimpressive, and grossly mismanaged. In addition, poor food quality and safety standards make it dangerous for vulnerable segments of the population (e.g. asthmatic, elderly, infants). If you want good KBBQ in this area, I highly recommend Han Joo just...

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