SK Seoul Kalbi Korean BBQ — Restaurant in San Bruno

Came here with some out-of-town friends to catch up. If it wasn't for the general good vibes of being with your close friends enjoying your time anywhere and not wanting to ruin our time, I would have spoken to the manager to let him know of the bad experience.

The wood charcoal will smoke, of course... But make sure the overhead vents are operating. Ours wasn't, or wasn't turned on. So literally ALL the smoke just headed straight for my face. Yes, I "caught all the smoke." The vents for the next table over were on and pulled some of our smoke, but through my face. I tried to tell the host to see if it's on but was just ignored. I don't know if he couldn't hear me, or understand me, or what.

Do not order the "pitcher" of Hite beer. It's not a pitcher at all. It's just a bigger plastic bottle which doesn't even look decent. And they didn't have any cold ones I guess so they bring one out sitting in a bowl with a lot of water and a little ice to try and make it cold. No joke. After waiting 15 minutes I tell the host to get us more ice for it since its still not cold at all. He grabs a scoop and puts more ice in the bowl and says he will just put it in the fridge for a bit for us. So after another 20 minutes, he brings it out and its kinda cold I guess. We just drink it since we wanted beer. Oh well. This blew my mind. Ridiculous.

After our first charcoal was completely burned out and not hot anymore, barely cooking, I try to get the host's attention so he can bring us out another batch so we can keep cooking. We have some chicken on there which is not going to cook right. He sees me I think but doesn't say or nod or anything for a good 5 or 10 minutes. Then he comes to the table next to us and takes their order while he dismisses me and says they're first. Then he goes to a table in another room and takes their order and comes back to us and asks me for the order. I tell him I didn't need to order, that we just needed another batch of heat since its completely out. This was totally evident to anyone that would have just bothered to look instead of dismiss. It was rude since he never asked, just assumed. He never spoke, just used hand and eye gestures to basically tell me to wait. Even the other cooks or staff see you asking for attention but do nothing.

Was the actual food good? It was ok. Meat quality was decent. Seemed fresh. They don't have much for sauce or flavoring though. The salad bar is decent. It was fresh and clean. It's a little cramped so you can't get to the salad bar often if you're not in an end seat.

I rarely if ever post negative reviews. This time I just couldn't let it go. Especially since we had to grin and bear it for the sake of just trying to have a good time out with friends and not rock the boat. And for the price? No way. Not for the experience I had. Probably the single worst Korean bbq experience I've ever had in...

I haven’t been to this KBBQ spot in over 6-7yrs and they use to have a salad bar but now they removed it and added more tables. The price went up but so has the quality of their food and honestly there are no comparable AYCE KBBQ spots in the vicinity that you get to cook over charcoal. Also they never changed or upgraded their ventilation system so you will end up smelling like smoke when you leave.

Let’s start with the service, I came here with my friend and as we came in we weren’t greeted or acknowledged on what to do or where to wait so we just sat down with the other party of two in the waiting area. A little confusing with no sign up on the waitlist or anything. We came on Monday night at around 730 and waited about 15 minutes to be seated for a party of 2. Once seated they place a fresh hot charcoal grill at your table and take your order, I think there were two servers for the whole restaurant on a Monday night but service wasn’t slow but sometimes it was difficult to flag down someone.

Now let’s get to the food. When you get to your table there is already a plate with 9 different bon chon which I liked 7/9 of them(the mac salad and the beans I didn’t like). My friend ordered the tofu soup with medium spice and he said it had a kick and the flavor was okay but it was weird to me because normally tofu soup is red in color but this one was not. The best side we got was definitely the steamed egg casserole, most kbbq places overcook it and it gets all bubbly and the texture is bad but not this place, they cook theirs to perfection where the texture is nice and soft like a soufflé, absolutely a must order. We tried all the beef options and they stay true to their name because Kalbi is 👑 here, their cut is nice and thick and not overly fatty, when cooked it retains its thickness but is still very tender and the marinade is not too sweet. My second favorite is the bulgolgi, good amount of beef flavor that is not drowned out by an overly sweet marinade and beef is tender. Third is a toss up between what’s normally my go-to the brisket and the rib meat, both were decent. Last is the butchers cut, it wasn’t bad but it just wasn’t anything special. I would come back to try the other kinds of meat and...

I wish I had written a review for this place over a year ago when we first started going here and there was no worry about COVID19. If I would have written the review during those times I would have given them 5 stars.

Now two days later after a attempted visit I am angrily writing this review and disappointed so much has changed.

First off, don't try making online reservations (through Yelp), they stopped doing that and are only taking them over the phone. Would've helped to turn that feature off through yelp and not mislead people. We arrived thinking that there was no wait, but there was over an hour wait because the back patio area can only seat a few groups at a time. We added our name to the wait list and were told 45 mins, said sure, we drove out of our way for the experience anyway.

About an hour passed and we were told our table was ready, temperature was taken, information was collected from us (assuming it was in case contact tracing needed to be done at a later date). Then we were told they had made a mistake and it would be about another 10 mins, so we waited. 20 mins passed and the other group that had arrived after us, but had a reservation was let in (group of 9, thought that max was 6 during this time), no temperatures checked, no information collected. Still, our table was not ready, most people would have left, but we were starving at this point. A couple guys came walking in and were seated right away, once again, no temps checked, no information collected.

That's when we were given the look and here came the manager/owner? to try and explain that everyone who had been let in had a reservation and we'd been bumped. Simple math told us that the reason we were bumped was inadequately accounting for who had "reservations", and the group that should have been a max of 6, took an extra table to seat. Leaving us outside hungry.

The lack of empathy from management when we were told why we would have to wait longer is unacceptable in the industry. We expected much better than this. We will never return because of how we were treated. The adherence to the laws currently in place is inconsistent and we feel that were treated...