I absolutely love their hot stone bim bi bop. I have been here multiple times and have never been let down by their food and services until today. We ordered Bossam, which is a $35 pork belly dish, served with oyster sauce and Napa cabbage wrap. It is my boyfriends favorite dish and he has had it at multiple states at multiple restaurants. There are supposed to have chopped raw oyster chunks, where is nowhere to be found in the dish here. We dug through the sauce trying to find oyster pieces, but there was NONE. We called over a younger girl server and asked her why there were no oyster in the sauce when everywhere else's has actual raw oyster, and she said, maybe the other places have oysters but that's how we make it here. My boyfriend looked at her in the eyes and said, the MENU says there is oyster. She said, let me go check in the kitchen. She came back later and informed us that the way they made it is to blend the ouster into paste form and mix it in the sauce. Now, who blends or purée oysters? They are so expensive and you completely lose the texture. Or did you just not up them in to begin with? Or did you just MAKE UP the whole we-puréed-and-blend-the-oyster-in answer on the spot?
Several minutes later, we heard some exchanges of angry words in the back kitchen that could still be heard over the music. It sounded like someone asked "is he Korean". My boyfriend looks ethnically ambiguous. I am not Korean either. My boyfriend has been asked if he needed forks at Chinese restaurants before, so I completely understood the whole ethnicity issue if they made assumption about us. However, he understands some Korean conversations. This time the elder female server, presumably the owner of the restaurant, came out with my hot stone bim bi bop, put it down and hurried away without saying a word. In hindsight she looked a little worrisome and awkward when she served us at the table. We wanted to confirm our assumption so right before we left, we asked another server about oysters in the sauce. I don't think he completely understood what we were asking, and all he responded was that they "mix the oyster in with the kimchi paste".
I don't know if they are trying to cut edges and purposely leave out the oyster part, or they genuinely forgot, or they really "blended" the oysters in. We felt cheated. It was as if you order French friends but to get mashed potato, or lobster pasta but no lobster at all. But if you really did leave out the oyster part of the ingredients based on the customers' ethnicity, don't be alarmed that they call you out. And DO NOT talk about your customers in Korean assuming that they don't understand the language just because they don't LOOK Korean. Bossam was one of the most expensive dishes on the menu (given that it has oysters), and my boyfriends favorite Korean dish. I was really exited prior to coming in because he has never been here and I recommended it. Instead we could have gone to unlimited Korean BBQ and ordered more pork belly and paid less. read more