HYUN — Restaurant in New York

We ordered the $99 AYCE (5-6) platters option.

PROS: The food speaks for itself in terms of the Wagyu. The A5 Wagyu is so tender and so juicy. Highly recommend for any steak lover or for anyone who wants to treat themselves to a special occasion. Side Dishes were tasty (they have just 3; green onion salad, regular salad, and kimchi). The kimchi was plain (not much different from what you find elsewhere), but the green onion salad and regular salad were exquisite, light, and delicious. We kept asking for more. Their truffle salt was amazing and unique; my first time trying it and paired fantastically with the meat. Really enhanced the flavor while letting the meat shine. House-made wasabi was freshly ground and light and delicate without the choking flavor of regular wasabi. The person who cooked our meat was very friendly. The decor was very modern and thoughtful.

CONS: Upselling. The waitress who seated us tried to upsell us multiple times on the $135 option. It's okay to recommend it once, but repeatedly pushing for it made us feel very pressured. And then when we decided to stick with the $99 choice, she made it feel like we were choosing a very poor option and even left the table saying she doubted we would be full with the $99 option, which was very confusing as one doesn't normally walk away from AYCE with an empty stomach. Then she tried to sell us on the $120 UNI stone rice. After politely declining, she came back again once more and tried to upsell it to us again, which was very annoying. Seriously, we understand your margins are higher on the higher priced options, but don't offer the cheaper option if it's making you need to aggressively shove the more expensive options to guests.

This place is NOT actually AYCE. First, there is a 90 minute limit. Fine, that makes sense for AYCE. However, they do NOT let you cook your own meat, and they only let you order 3 types of meat at once (very small portions at once). Then they bring you the meat very slowly, and it's hard to flag down waiters to order more meat. Also, in between the platters, the person cooking has to clean the grill with bread, rub it down with fat again, heat it up again, etc. Then they sidle over to chat with other tables, or chat with other waters, In fact, we were constantly left hungry for more meat since one person cooks for multiple tables ( 5 at once). We finally received slightly faster service when other tables left late at night.

The person cooking our grill very abruptly ended our session. He finished cooking a platter of meat and said "That's it, over". We would have appreciated a heads up, e.g. "this next one is your last platter of meat!" or something along those lines instead of removing all the cooking ware immediately after finishing up the batch.

Really, the amount of food you can eat is the smaller of (food you can eat and food they bring and cook on their schedule), which is totally completely deceiving and not AYCE at all. We understand they're running a business and A5 is expensive, but this is deceptive marketing at best, and criminal at worst. All of us agreed we would have rather paid more in exchange for actual AYCE, where meat is brought out soon after you order it, and you can cook it at your own pace. All of us (6) left the restaurant not full.

When we asked the waitress if we could cook the meat ourselves, she said we could not because "the grill was too hot and you could injure yourself", which to be completely honest, makes zero sense. People cook their own meat all the time. We had 2 people who are very familiar with cooking meat, and 6 of us who have had BBQ before. Again, this is all just part of their business to slow down customers to an acceptable rate where they can still make a profit.

Overall, this place will leave you feeling like service was very poor and shady business practices. If all a restaurant needs today is to import A5 Wagyu from Japan be successful, then HYUN has hit it on the head. Unfortunately, they're missing out on a lot of the...

HYUN Korean BBQ of course is very well known in NYC. They offer a pretty unique experience called HYUN-makase. The star of their menu of course is their A5 Wagyu. Since weekends are usually very busy, I booked a slot on a random Thursday night for around 10p (they are conveniently open until 12a with last seating approx 10:30p).

All the table tops have grill and vent from the ceiling. As we were led to our table, I noticed the first few tables were all open seating and then as you move toward the rear of the establishment there are private booths. We got a private booth which added to the overall good experience.

The employees were all lined up and greeted us as we walked by...made me feel like a VIP for a moment. .

I had perused the menu beforehand and this is their current offering and price (subject to change) as of the writing of this review. They offer their HYUN-omakase for $159 per person which is actually not bad at all considering it comes with all you can eat wagyu at the end of the meal.

When we were seated the server Michael came by to get our drink orders (there is a very extensive alcohol list). The meal comes with banchan (side dishes) like kimichi, scallion salad and lettuce salad. The kimchi was quite unique here...very vibrant and definitely had a nice little kick to it. The scallion salad we kept eating and eating til there was no more. He recommended the uni from the a la carte menu and we decided to try it.

After Michael took our initial order, another gentleman came into the booth to check on our bbq order and to answer any questions. I though he was another server checking on us but I was mistaken. It was the grill master and his name was Golf (cool name by the way). He explained in great detail what we would be getting with the Hyun-makase. The chef picks the cuts of meat (which is makase part of their branding). He brought back a beautiful tray of meat that had a very good amount of marbling. The owners of HYUN take their wagyu very seriously and source all the meats from different farms in Japan and expertly prepare the cuts for the customers. You get three different kinds of salts: wine infused, regular and wasabi...meticulously measured.

Golf grilled the first course and explained the different cuts. Some standouts for me were the sirloin and mar There was also small pieces of toast brought to the table which were utilized as a paring for some of the meat cuts. He would grill the meats and put them off to the side of the cast iron pan so the do not burn. The uni also arrived at the table with special seaweed I had not seen before. During this first course, at one point, Golf grilled four pieces of wagyu and put them on top of the seaweed. Then he expertly transferred the uni to the top of the wagyu. This is all meant to be eaten in one bite...a delicious combo.

The second set of meat that was brought out were three large pieces of marinated Korean galbi. Already on out table was a large helping of raw onion which he grilled to perfection and then cut up in the pan. The wagyu pieces cooked pretty quickly in general and they melt in your mouth for each bite. In contrast, the galbi process takes a little longer but certainly worth the wait. He cooked each piece and then cut them up and mixed it all together with all the juices boiling. We had requested some rice on the side as well for the galbi to soak up all the sauce. Even without the rice, the galbi is known for being a very filling course in any korean bbq establishment. But it was so delicious.

Now it was time for the unlimited wagyu! Another tray of beautifully marbled meats were brought out along with more toast pieces. Golf did his thing and this was enough food for us.

*There is a penalty if there is any leftover

For dessert, we got both the shiso sorbet and hojicha ice cream.

Big props to Golf, the grill master who took care of us with excellent service. He was very professional, courteous and super helpful. I will definitely return with more friends and request him...

It was a night of waiting and frustration and this place is definitely not all you can eat. Not a good value in terms of amount of food and service.

We went this Sunday at 8:30pm with party of 5; barely anyone around. We chose $99 per person option because we didn't really need the extra cuts of meat. We had four different people come to recommend to us/ push us to the $135 one because the "cuts were premium". We asked what were the cuts, they said they don't know and only the butcher would know. How can you say the other cuts are more premium and not be able to tell me which cuts. We kept the $99 option and ordered two noodle dishes. Each of the noodles had about two bites of noodles in each ($24 each). Only rice option was a $120 uni/truffle rice which we didn't get.

There was one chef to cook across two tables when we first ordered. He spent a lot of time at the other table where he was speaking to the customers in Spanish. When he got to our table, he went over some items, put the first couple of pieces on the grill and when done, left for 10+ minutes back to his pals. The meat takes about 1 minute to cook because it's wagyu and thin cut so we had the chef’s attention for max 3-5 minutes. We ate about 2-3 pieces max per person and sat there 10+ minutes waiting for the chef to come back. Then it got even worse when a third table sat down next to us.

First box, you get a good amount of meat but waiting for him wasted a lot of time and you're not allowed to order more until you finish the box. Afterwards, you can choose what additional cuts you want from the cuts you've already tried but only 3 cuts at a time. The "encore" or refills came back smaller and smaller (~5-6 pieces of meat that are cut up when cooked for 5 people to share) and took longer and longer to come. Chef also didn’t come back for a long time, where I got to a point to ask if can we cook it ourselves as we just sat there for a long time.

Each meat refill took about 10-15 minutes and side dishes also takes 10+ minutes to get. We ordered a refill on one of the marinated short rib and allegedly it ran out but no one told us when we ordered it or after we sat there waiting 15 minutes for it until we asked where it was. So, one of our refills only had two cuts.

There's a 90 minutes time limit from the time you order so with all the wait time, we had about ~12 small pieces total of meat a person. Last order is supposed to be 20 minutes before the end but they didn't tell us and just told us this is your last plate when they put it down. Our bill said we had four refills but we definitely didn't. Everything takes so long to come that they made it so you can't have a lot even if you wanted to.

At this price, people would be expecting better service, more meat or both. Everyone is paying at least $100 pp before tips and you don't get much food and service between the "chef" and wait staff was pretty bad. Service at regular korean bbq places are 100x better and faster. We asked one of the guys that try to push us to order to the $135 option earlier to order our refill and his response was just "I don't take the meat orders" and walks away.

Everything we asked for including water took forever to come and the place was not packed. However, the bill took 2 minutes to come without us asking for it and she came back within 5 minutes to ask us if the bill was ready.

The meat was good but at that price, did we really eat that value? We were party of 5, spent $660 in total before tax and tips, $820+ after taxes and tips. High quality Japanese wagyu goes for ~$200 a pound so this was a horrible deal for the food because we definitely didn't eat 3lbs+ of meat and the service/ambiance didn't make up for the price differential.

If you want to try it, go ahead but don't get pressured into the more expensive one if you don't want it. Also, as bad as it may sound, low expectations going in is the way to go and you might be be pleasantly surprised unlike us, utterly...