Saturday, January 24, 2009

Soot Bul Gui Rim 2 -- eat till you bust

Soot Bul Gui Rim 2
233 S Vermont
Los Angeles, CA 90020
(213) 365-9992


All you can eat. Music to my ears when it comes to Korean barbecue. However, most of the all you can eat places comprise the quality of meat they give you so I'm not all that excited about that either. My friend was organizing a group to eat at Soot Bul Gui Rim 2 and since I hardly ever get up to Los Angeles, I thought I'd give it a try, so I went along for the ride.

The first thing I noticed was how small the place is. Separated into two sections, I was shocked that a guy lit up a cigarette while eating. I thought maybe it was a smoking and non-smoking section, but that would violate smoking laws wouldn't it? Oh well!

For $16.99 (adults) and $9.99 (kids), you get a choice of 16 different items for grilling. Panchan is scarce, only a few items such as kimchi, beansprouts, mushrooms, zucchini, but they do give you dduk.

We chose chadol baegi (brisket), marinated galbi (boneless short rib) and sirloin steak to start. They also use real charcoal here so on the positive side, it makes your meat taste so much better, but on the negative side, you're definitely going to smell terrible when you leave. The quality of meat here is really good. I was really surprised that everything they brought out was of high grade, fresh meat with bright red hues. The steamed egg was really tasty here. I had to ask for another.

We also tried the bulgogi (marinated beef), unmarinated galbi and squid. Everything was good. The more adventurous ones at our table also got some intestines which I chose to pass on. I'm just not a fan of innards.

If you are still hungry at the end of the meal you can get naeng myun (cold noodles) as a filler. It's not very good naeng myun so just eat fill up on the barbecue if you can.

Service is ridiculously awful here. I don't expect good service anyway when I go to Asian restaurants, but this was just even over what I am able to tolerate. You can ask for refills on your panchan but don't expect them to bring it. I think the average was if you asked three times, they'll probably bring it on the fourth try. Another thing is, check your tab to make sure they charged you correctly. Our table had 4 adults and a child and they charged us for 5 adults. Little things like that really brought the experience down. However, if you don't care about service and all you want to do is gorge on meat, then this is definitely the place for you. Great quality meats but that's about it.

2 comments:

Fire Ninja said...

I had took over for a friend and had my first UYE here. I see it hasn't changed much service wise. But then we gave them some chocolates to eat, and they were better. :)

Anita Lau said...

hahahahaha awesome! bribing with food is always a winner!