um.ma — Restaurant in San Francisco

First off, I want to say the business owner or manager was very nice and I'm very happy to have heard through my community grapevine that this is a very dog-friendly restaurant with ample covered outdoor seating in the back patio. The shop itself is tucked along the busy shopping street between Irving and Golden Gate Park in the Inner Sunset, easily accessible by the N Muni line. There tends to be fairly available street parking along 9th, if not, GGP, or another side street off of Irving.

My friend and I made last minute reservations for her birthday this evening here and snagged a table for two on the patio at 6pm. We were pleasantly surprised that we got a whole picnic table to ourselves as it was fairly busy for a midweek dinner, though it didn't feel too loud or crowded (great acoustics). The patio itself felt like an extension of the indoor seats of the restaurant, there were multiple heat lamps sprinkled around the large picnic tables.

We ordered a huge spread of food, including seafood pancake, 10 pieces of KFC, pork belly, and kimchi fried rice with bulgogi added on. I would say this place has amazing meat dishes, the pancake was a bit more doughy than expected, and the KFC was fantastic, though I think the staff confused our order of honey butter with soy sesame garlic KFC. We found the pickled banchan (side dishes) and radish cubes on the KFC to be surprisingly salty, so our unanimous recommendation would be to add pear or apple to the pickling juice to add a nice, more authentic touch to the pickled goods. As much as we enjoyed the pork belly, we also recommend adding apple or pear slices to help cut the saltiness from the marinated meat and balance the flavors out more. My friend enjoyed the kimchi fried rice, but the purple rice texture and flavor did not sit well with the kimchi in my opinion. It tasted super healthy and a bit like what I would mix at home if I were making a quick but wholesome dinner. I do appreciate the homemade kimchi, but as with the other sides, I recommend cutting down the salt!

Overall, we loved the ambiance, as it was a great dimly lit atmosphere for us to catch up, and we're excited to come back again to try more of the meat dishes and hope to see some changes or twists...

Pro, the pabulum is great and flavors are different than typical Korean pabulum. Con, the portions are more minuscule and more sumptuous than most Korean restaurants.

The vibe is very puerile adult - modern decor, puerile chefs, staff, and intriguingly enough, patrons.

Pabulum review:

Bulgogi ($24) was good. It had a very smoky flavor. The portion is minute - I mentally conceived it was a starter when it first emerged. The bulgogi was algid when it got to our table, customarily this dish comes in a sultry stone plate to keep it warm. Comes with rice upon request. Purple rice was cooked very well.

Kalbi Burger special ($12) was fantastic! The kalbi patty was SO GOOD. The bun emanates from Tartine next door, which is a buttery explosion. All the flavors work genuinely well together - inhibited time only - get it if you can! Note: Expect that the burger is a smidgen on the more diminutive side.

Seafood Pancake ($19) is fluffy, chewy, and the sauce was good. It is thicker than most seafood pancakes. Cerebrate Belgian waffle vs conventional waffle.

Proscribe Chan (comes with most main orders). My favorite was the Kimchi and seasoned (Gochujang?) green onions side dish.

Accommodation: Probably growing pains but the staff didn't seem to communicate with each other. Example was when we authoritatively mandated drinks and another staff asked if we wanted to authoritatively mandate drinks a few minutes later. Another time was when we asked for rice but had to ask again because the order wasn't put in. The table contiguous to us seemed to experience the same questions.

Seating: The tables were quite proximate together. I felt lamentable for the wait staff as they had to navigate the narrow aisles. Once you are sat at the table, it wasn't...

I really wanted to like this place but had to take off a star for inattentive service and another for the food.

The food tasted like a foreign take on Korean food to me. Each dish was just a little off for my liking: either too sweet or otherwise missed the proper flavor profile for how the dish is traditionally prepared.

Fried chicken with the ginger soy glaze: we got the 5pc which can only come with one glaze, you can choose two if you get the 10pc. The glaze was a little too sweet for my liking, but flavor was good otherwise and chicken was fried well.

Seafood pancake: the pancake was on the thinner side and had imitation crab + some other seafood sprinkled throughout. I can’t remember the other seafood because they definitely skimped on it. It also wasn’t the freshest, as a “fishy” taste accompanied each bite. The seafood pancake I’ve had at other Korean restaurants usually has some medley of scallions/onion mixed into the batter to give it more fragrance. This pancake was missing that, and I felt that it really took away from this dish.

Kimchi fried rice with pork belly: separately, the fried rice and the pork belly would be great dishes, but they didn’t do a good job incorporating them together. The pork belly was cooked well, it was pretty tender! However, I was a little thrown off, as it was dressed with a sweet sauce when I expected this dish to be savory. In general the flavor of the fried rice was good too, even had a nice spicy kick to it. However, I personally think the fried rice could use some more fragrance: more sesame oil might do the trick!

The ban chan selection was great though, my favorite being...