This one's a toughie. Being Korean, having lived in the US for the past four years, and now doing a short stint in Geneva for a few months, assessing the food of my home country completely out of context is a bit difficult.
So I'm giving it a middle-of-the-line-A-OK-three-star review.
Gaya is apparently the best Korean restaurant in town. It was definitely "authentic" in the sense that the owners, servers, chef, decor, and food were very Korean. Our table had the pajeon (veggie pancakes) and spicy squid with noodles to share, and I got a kimchi jjigae for my individual meal.
The pajeon was a good size, but a bit flavorless. It would have benefited from MSG-help, but it was a semi-business dinner so I refrained from reaching across the table to grab the soy sauce. The spicy squid was pretty good (and I usually don't even like squid), but the portion was a bit small for a full table. Between six of us, we each got perhaps two chopsticks worth of noodle, and I barely got a taste of the squid. There were only a couple of pieces left by the time the plate came my way, and again, being a business dinner, I chose the smallest piece of squid on the plate (damn Asian etiquette). Then, the individual dishes. Finally! A full dish of my own!! I'm not exactly sure whey I chose the most standard Korean dish on the menu, one that you can't do particularly well or particularly poorly. It was fine, and tasted exactly as it should, but no surprises.
In most other situations, I would have probably returned. Although the food wasn't particularly impressive, it was definitely standard "authentic" Korean food. But I'd just barely gotten used to the US $9-12 price tag on a dish that goes for $3-5 in Korea, and I don't think I'm ready to stomach the CHF28-32 for the same dish. At least not yet. read more