New Seoul Korean BBQ Buffet

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9902 Garden Grove Blvd., Garden Grove, California 92844

(714) 537-9292

Cuisine:
Buffets, Korean
Price:
$$
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Porkin' out Photo - New Seoul Korean BBQ Buffet, Garden Grove, California

User Reviews

A Fun All-you-can-eat DIY BBQ Experience

by stvchin

Tustin, California

January 21, 2010

Best of IgoUgo New Seoul Korean BBQ Buffet is a typical all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ where you can BBQ your own food at your table. New Seoul Korean BBQ Buffet is in a strip mall on the south side of Garden Grove Blvd., just west of Brookhurst Street. The ...Read more New Seoul Korean BBQ Buffet is a typical all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ where you can BBQ your own food at your table. New Seoul Korean BBQ Buffet is in a strip mall on the south side of Garden Grove Blvd., just west of Brookhurst Street. The restaurant is not easily visible from the street, as it faces sideways in the strip center. I went with three friends, and all have been to Korean BBQ restaurants before, so we knew what to expect, and we had a plan.

We were greeted quickly and given a booth off to the side. The only seating in the restaurant are booths with large tables with rectangular gas grills in the middle. Large fume hoods hung down from the ceiling above each grill, but we knew that you’d end up smelling like the BBQ regardless. There is a buffet area in the middle of the restaurant, with one side of the main buffet table full of raw meats of all sorts. The other side is the vegetation and noodles. There’s a smaller side buffet area with already cooked items, and another section with sushi. As we sat down at our big marble table, our waitress fired up our oiled up gas grill set in the middle of our table and turned the fume hood up to max. She took our drink orders and left. The décor of the restaurant was a bit amusing with pink booths and turquoise lighting, but we weren’t here for the ambiance. My friends, who have been to New Seoul Korean BBQ Buffet before, mentioned it’s usually quite busy, except for today, probably due to the heavy rains in the area.

Our plan was to ignore the precooked items, ignore the vegetation and noodle, and head straight for the meat section. The buffet is $18.95 regardless of how much and what you eat, not including drinks. We figured we would get the most bang for our buck by gorging ourselves on the meat. However there are signs clearly mentioning not to waste the meat, as wasted food will be charged to your bill.

The meat section of the buffet has a large variety of uncooked meats. There is teriyaki chicken, spicy chicken marinated in a menacingly reddish sauce with red pepper flakes, bulgogi, which is a traditional Korean beef marinated in a sweet, teriyaki-like sauce, galbi, which are traditional Korean marinated beef short ribs, boneless beef short ribs, two different cuts of beef brisket, pork belly (labeled bacon,) thinly sliced pork chops, cow tongue, spicy marinated pork, tripe, tri-tip sliced thin, mussels, oysters, eel slices, baby octopus, some miscellaneous white fish. The other side of the buffet has the typical salad items and toppings, as well as some Korean specialties, such as pickled radishes and kim-chee. We glanced at the precooked section. There is fried rice, fried gyoza, a Korean layered egg dish, and tempura vegetables, as well as other items I basically ignored. The sushi section had tuna, yellowtail, and shrimp, as well as two types of rolls, and an interesting bean curd roll, which I picked up out of curiosity.

We piled on the marinated short ribs and bulgogi and headed back to our table. In the meantime, our waitress had already brought us plates half filled with rice and brought our drinks, as well as chopsticks and 2 sets of tongs. We started piling the meat onto the now hot BBQ grill and eagerly waited. Normally we would now consume the precooked items while awaiting our meat to cook, but we could wait. I had spooned off a little bit of the Korean layered egg dish. I had never tried the layered egg dish before and it seems to taste like really salty egg whites with air whipped in. I then tried the bean curd wrapped rice I picked up from the sushi section. It was actually quite sweet and I liked it.

All of the meat is sliced thin and grills very fast. You just have to remember the rules of cross contamination between cooked and uncooked. We brought separate plates from the buffet area, using clean plates to move the cooked meat onto. If the meat is undercooked or burned, that’s all your own fault, since you do the cooking. Every now and then, the waitress would come by with a set of kitchen shears and cut up the galbi for us, as it’s initially in a set of 3 bones. The boneless beef short ribs are not marinated, but have a nice meaty quality when cooked. Both cuts of brisket and the beef tongue were also quite good. The spicy pork, pork belly, and thin cut pork chops, were all great. But the best of all the meats were the galbi and bulgogi. The galbi was excellent, the meat was both savory and sweet. Even though some parts were fatty, we just removed those sections and set them on our "trash" plate where we put our bones. The bulgogi is nice and tender, also with a sweet quality, as I think both the bulgogi and galbi use the same marinade. On the other hand, the tripe didn’t really have any flavor. We grilled the oysters until they were cooked in their own boiling juices and lemon juice. The little baby octopus were marinated in the spicy marinade with the red pepper flakes. As they were cooked, the muscles in the oysters initially contracted, giving the appearance that they were moving around and alive for a few seconds. We didn’t each cook our own meat, we shared the different meats we had brought to the table, and if you saw that any of the meat needed to be tended to, you’d grab the tongs and flip or remove the meat.

As we kept cooking, the grill started getting caked with burnt on meat juices and marinade. There was considerable oily splatter at least 6 inches in all directions from the grill as we kept cooking. We kept getting fuller and fuller until we could gorge no more. We had spent almost 1 hour and 45 minutes in the restaurant, made about 6-8 trips to the buffet, piling on heaps of uncooked meat each time. We signaled to the waitress that it would be about time to go. With our permission, she turned off the grill and we paid up and waddled out, smelling like the food we had eaten.

There’s something fun about the entire Korean BBQ experience. Part of it is the same fun of gathering around a backyard BBQ as you’re working the grill. The other part is being gathered around a campfire. And that, combined with the fun experience of sharing a table together, make New Seoul Korean BBQ Buffet a highly recommended experience. The food is good here, the place is clean, and the selection is quite plentiful. Just come hungry, real hungry. Close

From journal Eating Asian in the OC

New Seoul Korean BBQ Buffet

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User Reviews

A Fun All-you-can-eat DIY BBQ Experience