Kunjip — Restaurant in Santa Clara

I love this place and come here often with my family. That said, it pains me to take two stars off because of an incident that took place when I went there on Sunday (6/25) with my family, among whom were my grandparents visiting from Korea.

Before I go on to explain what happened, please don't take this review as a reason not to visit this place. I highly recommend the restaurant because their food is excellent (almost as good as my mom's cooking, haha) and besides the one rude waitress we had to deal with, the service here is quick, attentive and overall, fantastic.

Nothing happened while we were waiting and eating our meal. It's what happened afterwards that ticked my family and I off.

We finish our meal and had a good time. My grandfather paid for the meal with the intention of leaving a 25% tip behind AFTER we got our change back (we usually leave 20% no matter where we go, but the service was really good that day). Before the incident, we had a really good experience thanks to the two older waitresses (roughly in their 50s, I'm guessing) who tended to our every need. The three stars are for them and the good food.

The rude waitress, who brought back our change, was relatively young (I'd guess somewhere in her mid to late 30s, or maybe even early 40s) compared to the other two and tied up the front part of her hair in a way that is reminscent of ancient samurai hair. She rudely tossed the change on the table, saying in Korean what is essentially, "Way to leave tip." That was an incredibly and unnecessarily rude way to treat not just a group of people who intended to leave behind tip, but also an elderly man who did nothing to deserve this type of treatment. My dad confronted the woman about her behavior, though of course she would protest despite having my family (a group of 6) and the next table (a group of 4) witness her rude behavior. We ended up leaving 20% instead of 25% and specifically told the manager to not give the rude waitress any part of the tip, that all of the tip had to go the two waitresses who treated us so well. One of the older waitresses came by and apologized on the rude one's behalf even though it wasn't her fault. Two stars taken away because of this one waitress. In no way is it the restaurant's and other waitresses' fault for having such a crabby employee/coworker. She should fix her attitude or at least leave it at the door if she doesn't want to ruin the experiences of other customers.

I hate taking stars away when I leave reviews because I want businesses like this one to succeed. This place specifically is a family favorite because it is the closest it comes to the ox bone soup and cold noodles that my grandmother and mom used to make when we were little. I'm a little upset that one rude waitress essentially ruined what would've been an otherwise amazing experience with delicious food and otherwise...

I usually don't write a review unless its exceptionally good or outrageously bad. This one was outrageous bad. The service in particular. My wife and I went for lunch and I put my name down on their iPad and it said that I was 7th in line. We walked around and bit and I came back when my name was the next in line. I was waiting at the waiting area and saw a few people come in and get seated. It was the person after after me on the line as I heard the server say his name and his name was taken off from the list. I walked up to the person who sat them down and said that I was in line ahead of him and she said that I should have come up and told her "you have to announce yourself to get seated" (in Korean) then what's the point of putting our names down and giving our phone number?! I got a text soon after getting seated that my table was ready. So the text system works and the server just didn't want to do her job. As soon as we were seated, a server came over to ask what we wanted to eat so we just ordered the 2 basic seolleongtang. A different server dropped off 1 seolleongtang and I told her that we ordered two, and she rudely said that another one will come out later. Clearly she had an extra one for a different order and just dropped it off to me. We had to wait a while for the next one to come out. Note that a seolleongtang is usually in a big pot and just needs to be put in a bowl. I had to wait until the the next one come out since, unlike most other places, the seolleongtang came in a stainless steel bowl, it got cold really quickly. After about 5 to 10 minute after the second one came out, a server came and dropped of the check and said "Thank you" No one checked in on us throughout the entire time there. Lastly, the seolleongtang was pretty bland, not in a normal way with a deep bone broth taste but just kind of watery. I wouldn't have went back because of the quality of the food but I am writing this review because no one should be treated this way. I still tipped, as I was a server myself for so long but never experienced such bad serve by the entire staff and not just...

I went to this place thinking that I would get seafood pancake because I saw it on Yelp photos. Once I arrived they didn't have it on the menu. I quickly realized that the menu is pretty limited. Looks like the main special is the braised beef $75. Despite the fact that the food was pretty good, there were more downsized that made me bring the rating down to 3/5 out of five. Probably not return here again. Because there are more options now for Korean food and they have a lot of competition.

Naengmyun 4/5 I've eaten a lot of naengmyon ( cuz I'm korean 😉) This one hits all the right flavor notes. They have mustard and also vinegar on the side to adjust tastes levels. You don't see that at every Korean restaurant. The beef that they put in there is super high quality and very soft. At $20 I think it's okay. Not the best value, but if you're at this restaurant You're kind of stuck with a limited choice of options.

Sellongtang 4/5: This is a bone broth soup that you need to add salt or pepper for The taste. It's traditional and very authentic. For some people it could be pretty bland. But it's what I grew up with. They nailed it. Super high quality pieces of beef.

Service 5/5: Very attentive service team there. You just need to flag them down when you need something or ready to pay the bill.

Downsides:

Parking: 3/4 During peak hours like in the evening on a Sunday, the parking is atrocious. I spent driving around a lot about 10 minutes before I found something. Wait time : 40 mins. Busy on Sunday evening. I think if you're into the braised beef it's worth the wait. But we just ordered noodles and we could have gotten that at any of the other restaurants that was close by with less wait times.

Banchan is limited . If you're accustomed to the location in mountain view, you'll quickly realize that this is a minimal version of that restaurant. In particular, the banchan is only three dishes ( kimchi, cucmber , spicy radish) compared to several dishes at typical Korean...