Sad about Stone Korean, Financial District, SF.

Korean beer and soju (some Japanese, too) at Stone Korean! This brought back some Korea nostalgia. :) I bought the Groupon for Stone Korean last week and was SO excited to try it! I've heard a lot about it and have heard good things.. sadly, I was very disappointed. :(

Get this, I had to ask for some banchan! What kind of Korean restaurant do you have to ask for banchan at?! The banchan was good though and I think it was more that we had a bad server.. She didn't once check on us and we ended up just walking up and getting our own water refill, because she never came by.

We did the Ssam for Two (쌈밥) dinner and chose the spicy pork (above) and kalbi. Ssam is just a barbeque style meal where you make lettuce wraps. You get take a piece of lettuce, and maybe a little rice and meat with Korean hot bean paste. It's so yummy and you can really put anything you want inside of the wrap. It is the traditional way to eat Korean BBQ.

I thought the spicy pork was going to be spicy pork bulgogi, but it was actually samgyupsal (삼겹살), which is like Korean bacon. It was okay, but was sliced too thick and could have been spicier. The kalbi was too tough, and was cut too large to make ssam. Traditional Korean restaurants will give you scissors to cut the meat as you grill, but here they didn't even provide a fork and knife. We ended up asking for a set, but they should know these pieces are way too big for ssam.

With the Ssam for Two, you get to choose between soondooboo and kimchi jjiage (김치찌개). We chose the kimchi jjigae. Traditionally, when you get ssam you get the banchan, and then meat with ssam, then rice and soup. That way, you don't have too much going on and the soup doesn't get cold. They brought everything out at once though and it was just too much. Everything ended up going cold, too. The soup was pretty flat and awful cold.

I don't know if LA just upped my standards for Korean, or what, but I just don't buy the hip ambiance and location over good Korean good done right. I do want to try the happy hour menu and see how the small plates are, but I wouldn't go back for entrees. I do want to like this place though, so I hope the small plates are better!!

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