Bonchon San Mateo — Restaurant in San Mateo

Since the owner was kind enough to respond to the review, I ought to write something, so I am.

I've got vague memories of going to other Bonchon locations near prior jobs, and to be honest, I cannot remember anything good or bad about them. I say this as a contrast to this location.

Every visit I have made has found the San Mateo Bonchon to be very clean and orderly, the staff friendly and responsive, and the food to be delicious and very fresh.

Whether during busy times or quieter hours of the day, I've never found myself needing to request refills of water, and at least once (if not more) during the meal, someone stops by to check in. Normally, that's what you see at "fancier" sit-down places, so having that here just feels extra luxurious.

As stated above, the food has always been extremely fresh. Yes, that means you've gotta wait a second to get your food, but I'd argue that it's not just worth it, but infinitely preferable to having it be instant but having sat under a warming light for who-knows-how-long.

All this to say that if you are walking about in downtown San Mate, and get a whiff of fried chicken, there are other options, but this is the best of them, in my...

I've been going to this chain for over half a decade now and I've slowly seen them slip away in quality, shrinking portion sizes, and jacking up the prices. I paid 33$ for a 20 piece strips in 2022 and its now 55$. I'm not even joking with you that the first time I ordered the strips years ago it was a massive mound of food. Like more than an entire chickens worth of meat. Each strip was like a dinosaur sized slab of meat and fried really well. Then of course they had to reduce the portion sizes which was understandable but still sad. I still liked the flavor and the quality was still decent so I kept coming back. This time i ordered was different. The chicken was pretty poorly fried and tons of uncoated spots on almost every strip. They also stopped using their own branded boxes which were designed to let out extra steam so that if you travel with them at all they don't get a soggy. Now they use the same horrible brown paper boxes that you see at every other place. There was also a horrible black mutation on the inside of one of the strips. Go back to your roots guys, yall are missing the mark. Put some love and care back into this place. I hope you do because I used to...

I'll start by saying my experience here was 1 star. The Tempe location gives it a bump because the chicken is worth trying. Now, to the San Mateo location, if you're with a pescatarian or Halal friend, this place is a massive mistake and the surrounding competition makes it unworthy of ever revisiting. Service: it was very reactionary-- to the ant that crawled on our table. It was at that point they finally noticed the near empty water and offered to refill it. They offered to replace the dish, which brings me to the second error, food: the entree wasnt worth taking home to finish or to replace. It didnt taste right and was an overall mystery mush. Another factor that didnt help was that there was a football game on and they decided to put the world series of poker on, making it not even worth a place to grab wings and watch sports. Didnt ask them to change the channel because we werent there to watch the game, but all the TVs playing poker seems like a waste. Luckily the gratuity was already on the check so we didnt feel bad for not...