Sesame Korean Grill — Restaurant in Santa Cruz

IF YOU HAVE FOOD ALLERGY, PLEASE READ! The lesson here: you have to be extremely clear, emphasize your food allergy, and triple check because the people working at this place don’t communicate to each other! I have been to Sesame before and always enjoyed it. However what happened last night was really unprofessional. I asked if I can order seafood pancake without shrimp (I am allergic to shrimp). The waiter said yes they can make it without shrimp and jotted down no shrimp in my order. Pancake came out and I tried to check if there was any shrimp just to be extra cautious. I didn’t see any so I ate one piece. However, in my second piece I found 3 tiniest little shrimps. I showed one shrimp to the waiter and to one of the lady chefs. The lady chef denied at first but I insisted she need to recheck so she turned around and asked the other lady chef. The other chef confirmed yes it was shrimp. (I was horrified). The lady chef quickly said oh so sorry and left immediately. I asked the waiter if he could ask the chefs to remake the pancake for me or do something about this. He said okay sure but returned within seconds to tell me that the chefs cannot make the pancake without shrimp. So the waiter didn’t know how the pancake was made and the chefs didn’t communicate to waiter albeit his notes. The waiter said that he refunded my pancake which was nice of him but hey I didn’t finish my pancake and the piece that I ate was contaminated. So what did he refund me for? Anyway, that refunded money was used for a box Benadryl, an anti itch cream, and a bottle of water. Thanks Sesame for a...

I'm so glad I happened to notice they were open, and on opening night! I've been waiting excitedly for this since I saw the application for liquor license go up. This was worth the wait!

I ordered the daejja bulgogi, which was perfect, and had the corn tea. This of course came with plenty of banchan. Susana (who I think is the owner?) kept stopping by to check on me and apologizing for the spotty, opening night craziness. Everything was actually perfect. I had a book, so I didn't even notice if it was slow. I was very excited to see that they had seaweed salad and mook, which I have been unable to find anywhere. Prices were also a good deal - the banchan kept coming, the tea kept flowing, and it was only $17 for meat, rice, banchan, and tea. I'll definitely order the mandu and ssam next time, too.

Don't let the outside fool you - inside is very well done up. It is a bit small though (20 or 30 tables?), and I anticipate them becoming very popular, so plan ahead.

I'm excited to...

I wanted to rate this restaurant well but unfortunately I could not. We arrived when they were not busy and they took around 30 minutes to take out order. They wouldn’t have even noticed we were there if someone else would have not mentioned it. They never asked if we wanted refills and were ignoring us the whole time. I don’t want to say it was a race thing, but it totally felt like it. We waited about 1 hour and a half and never received our food. Meanwhile, even one else that got there after us received there food no later then 10 minutes after they ordered. When we finally got tired of waiting, we asked for our check and they were going to give us the check for the food that we NEVER got. When the waiter realized we never received the food she told us that the tea was free. Super upsetting because we honestly excited to try...