Yaedam Korean BBQ — Restaurant in Pleasant Hill

OK, First things first. The food...Flippin' AMAZING!

I might be biased because I'm Korean but seriously, the food is delicious.

This place used to be a different Korean restaurant pre-pandemic but everything's new/different/changed now and this is yet another example.

Back to the food...

The banchan is well done and flavorful and has authentic flavors that is really hard to do well. The Kim Chee Jigae is OUT OF THIS WORLD!!!!! The richness of flavor without being over salted is what surprised me. They also had a korean beer that I never had before so that was pretty cool.

You know I had to order the Kal Bi too. That was super good as well. The manager/owner said that an order would feed 1 and a half people but we found that it'll easily feed 2 and in our case they brought out 4 decent sized ribs and it fed all 4 of us. Granted 2 of my party were little ones (actually 1 little one and my teenage son who could put away the groceries).

One of the issues I had was that things I asked for didn't show up and I had to either ask multiple times for them or the wrong thing showed up. Eventually I asked to cancel a couple items off our order. If it weren't for that I would absolutely give this a 5 star review.

In the end it wasn't a big deal but I can see these things being exacerbated during high volume times like Friday or Saturday evenings. With that being said I think it's a 4.5 star place.

Well done, authentic Korean food is hard to do and good places are a rarity. I would be more than happy to drive an hour to come back with my family or wife on a date night/cruise.

Support your local korean restaurant, give this place a try (just not on Friday or...

Yaedam KBBQ is slightly better than your average korean bbq restaurant based on the quality of their meat. We decided to go a la carte (though they do have AYCE) since we weren't very hungry. We ordered the premium pork jowl and brisket. Both dishes were good portions. Our party of three adults had plenty to eat. Each order came with a side of steamed white rice and assorted banchan. Their banchan dishes were decent, but was disappointed that they didn't provide anchovies. Also, we weren't offered refills and were only given two pieces of lettuce for wrapping. I guess refills only come when you do AYCE. Their housemade bean paste was excellent.

As for the atmosphere, there could be some improvement. The lights were not turned on during our meal so it was rather dim. Also, there were uncleaned tables near us despite the restaurant being more than half empty. We came right as they re-opened from their afternoon break so not sure why there were still dirty tables.

Service was decent; nothing stood out good or bad.

Overall a very underwhelming experience. We won't...

The bulgogi was unseasoned and the prices were outrageous, at least to my sensibilities. By having such large and expensive portion sizes, it is impossible to have the mix and match kbbq experience I have known and loved for so long. I really feel like I only got $40 of food, 50 at most, and another 10 of service, but it came out to more than double that, plus tip. I'm not even comparing it to cheap podunk hometown rates, for the amount of money I paid, KBBQ shops in Las Vegas can get you three times as much food, better quality overall, and you can try different things. I don't want to pay 30 dollars for a single pound of just one preparation of meat, I'd much rather pay 10 bucks each for 3 kinds. The desert cannot be split by fewer than 3 people, so I feel like at least I get good value from that, but the meat is where it counts, and I could've spent that money better. I'm really sorry, Yaedem, but it just...