To call this place a western movie set of a restaurant would be generous. When I stepped into the cheap turning doors of this overly sterile smelling faux korean establishment I could immediately assume only the worst. The place seats what has to be over 150 people, with decor that screams of some hands off owner / investor's idea of a trendy asian fusion spot pulled from pinterest or tumblr, except they missed the mark by about 12 years. The entire restaurant was empty, though to be fair it was a Wednesday. The sushi chefs were standing behind the line looking utterly bored and uninspired, and the hostess was nice enough. TVs decorated the top of the bar, which had a sad selection of spirits for a place that boasts of being a "Martini Bar". We were presented with two too many menus, one standard, one special, one sushi (which was entirely printer paper) and one drink. Our table was uneven, as was multiple others, giving their hand away with not so skillfully tucked napkins under their legs. The menus by the way, were entirely AI generated. The food pictures were the likes of NYC (I live in Brooklyn) bodega signs, some machines idea of what food could be if it was real but entirely uniform and artificial. I mean how do you spend what I would assume is millions in capital on a restaurant and cheap out on the menus? The font looked as if someone chose it if it cost money to pick one, and they clearly went with the cheapest option. The prices, which we noticed as soon as we approached the hostess stand that had specials posted, were astronomical and clearly just passing the cost of overhead onto the consumer, which if most people realized how often this happened, would not be going out to eat nearly as often.
Let me also tell you, this is about the only god damn time I have ever been thankful for American tipping culture. Our server took forever to give us water, switched out our glasses, took our drink orders, which took entirely too long for a restaurant that had one other top occupied in the entire place. My fellow diner's G+T came almost entirely luke warm. We ordered, our food came out of order, first two out of three of our appetizers, then my sashimi which did not inspire confidence in me in the Cherry Hill seafood scene. Our gyoza had freezer burn marks on it. Did I mention it cost $12? Teokbokki that miraculously did not have the bounce or chewiness that even store-bought teokbokki has or any other type ive ever had from anywhere else. This was followed by an almost twenty minute period in which I had to ask the server if I could please have the other roll of sushi I ordered about 35-40 minutes ago. I forgot to mention also that when asked what was the difference between the gyoza on the regular mention and the Korean dumplings on the almost completely illegible "special" menu our server had almost no idea and said "they're the same thing, one is just in Japanese and one is in Korean". At one point we could hear the server arguing with the hostess about over hiring in the restaurant, and understaffing for that night specifically.
The prices here were prices I would normally see at a place in NY or Brooklyn, but in those places the food would be up to par to pay those prices, and the wait staff and ambience would be something not out of a post modernistic capitalist nightmare. I could, through spending a little over a very painful hour in this establishment, clearly see someone with significant capital who saw an opportunity to take advantage of both the growing Asian population in Cherry Hill and unsuspecting individuals who did not know better by charging unreasonable prices for sysco freezer burnt garbage and extremely mid grade fish presented in a way that showed a very clear limited understanding of the food itself.
When presented with the check, multiple things were overcharged, and my one Sapporo was missing entirely. A generous 10% was added to the bill.
This place is representative of the strip-mall hellscape and everything that is wrong with people who see restaurants as a soulless vessel with the singular purpose of turning profit and I guess building a portfolio of inevitably failed food service businesses. One should never leave a restaurant feeling cheated or underserved, but that is about the only thing this place seemed to have achieved successfully. read more