Itto Sushi and Myung Ga Restaurant — Restaurant in West Valley City

My exposure to Korean food is limited, so this review pertains to my experience as an American born half Chinese man who likes food but has a generally Americanized palate.

My family wanted to experience a bit of a range of items here so we got the Bulgogi Jeongol (soup), Ramen Soondubu (soft tofu soup), Kimchi Jeon (pancake), Fried Dumplings, Chicken Tangsuyuk (sauced stir fry), side of rice, and for dessert strawberry Bingsu (snow ice with fruit topping). Overall the food was not great, with the only standout being the Bulgogi Jeongol, so I'll start with that.

The Bulgogi Jeongol is a clear broth soup with thin shaved marinated beef, carrots, broccoli, onions, and clear noodles. It was more sweet than I expected but if you are a fan of a caramelized French onion soup or otherwise sweeter things in general, then I don't think you'd be put off. The flavors overall were simple, a sweet beef broth with some sesame flavors, with cooked veggies. The beef is extremely thin cut and boiled, so it ends up being very easy to eat, and not chewy. It also holds the broth well which is nice for a soup dish. The clear noodles tend to be soft and stretchy as opposed to a ramen or egg noodle which is texturally more firm and snappy. Not a bad thing, just different and worth commenting on. This dish was by far the family favorite and the broth over rice (paid side dish) was delicious.

The Ramen Soondubu on the other hand was just okay. This soup falls into the "soft tofu" category and so be aware that this is a different soup than the standard ramen you've probably had elsewhere. Overall the dish was simply muddled. A mix of ramen noodles, with mushrooms, beef and soft tofu. The broth wasn't interesting enough to support the soup, the beef and mushrooms were bland, and the tofu was soft enough that it got shredded to bits by the cooking process. I guess I like larger chunks when eating soft tofu as the silky texture is more pronounced when you can get a spoonful of it. Even the noodles were a letdown as they seemed to be chopped up. We were not able to get a nice lift of noodles out of the bowl. Even if this is a different cultural dish, when you have an image in your head of what "ramen" is this just can not compare.

The Kimchi Jeon is essentially a pancake that has bits of kimchi mixed into it. We did not feel that the kimchi was pronounced enough in the dish, and it felt dense. This was our first experience with a Jeon, so that might be intentional, but not really to our liking.

The Chicken Tangsuyuk was sad. Described as "Korean sweet & sour chicken" we got it to be the safety dish for a new experience. Sweet and sour chicken is something that generally crosses borders, so I think it's perfectly fair to recommend that you go to a fast food Chinese restaurant for your sweet and sour chicken instead. This was dry overcooked chicken under a soggy mess of breading and sauce. It felt and tasted like yesterday's reheated leftovers. Hopefully we simply were served yesterday's reheated leftovers and if you order it you will get something different, but I am going to review what I got.

The Fried Dumplings were good. Simple but nice. They forgot to give us the dipping sauce, and when we asked for one, they brought it out promptly, but it was cold and I doubt it was cold in an intentional way.

Finally, the strawberry Bingsu. This is actually the reason why we came to Myung Ga Restaurant. We recently had some strawberry Bingsu on a family trip (dessert only) and it was a revelation. This one is not a revelation, but it is nice. Essentially it is a shaved ice dish covered in a sweet strawberry sauce and fresh strawberries. The ice itself is not plain water, but (and I'm guessing here) likely a mix of water and sweetened condensed milk. Compared to the version we had previously this is a shadow of what it could be. In the end it's still a good dessert, and I recommend it, but realize that it's a 'this is the only version of this I could find in Salt Lake City' version of...

The outside of Myung Ga is very simple. The sign is kind of small, so I actually didn't know I had been passing Myung Ga every time I drove around that area. You walk in and you see a whole array of booths and tables. It is jammed pack with seating because the demand for this restaurant is so high. You're stopped by a hostess and a sign with a couple of the restaurant's items on it. I visited this restaurant for the first time with a group of friends for Angel's birthday party. We had made a reservation for 10 people and were seated right away at a huge table near the front. We were given menus and our drinks.

We looked over our menus for quite some time because we had to wait for two people. Everyone finally came and ordered. They took our orders and left without coming back for a while. It was probably because they had to prepare all of our food. After about 30-40 minutes of waiting, we were served our food, except for one of my friend. They had totally forgotten about her order. They said it will be out soon, but since I can understand Korean, their conversation differed from what they told my friend; they had just forgotten about her food. She had to wait an extra 20 minutes for her food, and by the time she had received her food, the rest of us were almost done eating.

We waited for our checks, but they just weren't giving it to us and none of the waiters were coming by, so when they finally walked close enough to catch their attention, we asked for our checks. It took them a long time to give us our checks as well. We saw smaller tables receive their checks first even though we were there way before them. They gave us our checks after 20 minutes had passed, but when they gave it to us, they gave it to us all stacked up near the edge of the table and they all fell to the ground. I ended up having to pick all of them up and distributing them to my friends. They forced gratuity on all of our checks even though their service was truly terrible. We gave them our money and most restaurants try to get big groups out the fastest, but no we had to wait even longer for our cards and cash back. We were finally ready to go about three hours after we came in. We could have ate and left in about 1.5 or 2 hours, but no it took 3 hours.

I've heard such great reviews about Myung Ga and I was really excited to try it out for the first time. I rarely go out to eat at Korean restaurants because I can get most of this at home, so I don't see much of a reason to pay for Korean food; however, I decided to try it out because of my friend's birthday party and all the great compliments I have heard. I ordered Bean Paste Soup and it was delicious. This place probably has the best tasting Korean food for a restaurant. It tasted like actual authentic Korean food and I really enjoyed my soup, rice, and side dishes. The only thing they should really work on is their service. I do know it gets very, very busy on a daily basis. One time I tried coming to Myung Ga on a date and the wait was an hour long. I hope to come back and give a better rating, but for now I will stick with 2/5 stars because of how terrible their...

Had the worst experience here at Myung Ga Restaurant today. I had a visitor from out of state , she hasn't had Korean food for a long time and this was a special treat. We ordered Bibim Naeng Myun and tofu soup. Bibim Naeng Myun was awful!!! First of all, when a server brought Naeong Myun, I couldn't believe my eyes . I wish I took a picture of the food so I can prove it. It didn't even look very appealing. They just put big chunks of Ice cubes in the bowl! Who does that?? Never seen any restaurants put big ice cubes inside the bowl!! Also, not enough cucumbers, raddish! I only saw like 2 pieces of shredded cucumbers and 3 pieces of raddish. Seriously? Worst thing was that it didn't have enough sauce so it tasted so bland. It didn't taste anything like Bibim Naeng Myun. Even a homemade Naeng Myun taste 100 times better than this one. I asked our server for an extra sauce because it's so bland and needed more sauce. I showed her my bowl to show her how there's no sauce at all. She said ok and came back with small dish with sauce in it, and said it will be extra $2 for that sauce. Come on now, if you are going to charge for that spicy sauce ($2 seriously????) why not make it right from the first place. I think they are making Naeng Myun with not enough sauce so that they can make more money for extra sauce or somthing! I was so upset. Bibim naeng Myun usually comes with hot broth, so I even asked the server, and she said no not with Bibim Naeng Myun! Hm... so I said You must have a new cook or new owner, because last time I came here, it tasted so much better and had hot broth with it and that server said, No, I don't think so. The way she said was very rude. She didn't care if food didn't meet our expectation, or food wasn't good at all. It just totally ruined our lunch and I felt so bad for my friend who was so excited to eat Korean food but so disappointed at the quality of food and service. That noodle probably didn't even cost them $2 to make them, and charged us $13 plus that tiny bit of sauce for $2. No Thank you Myung Ga! I am never coming...