Kalbi Korean BBQ & Sushi

Great little Korean restaurant located near Farringdon. Mon-​Wed is cheaper for all you can eat BBQ than Thurs-​Fri. You have three menu choices to pick from if you chose from A and B you get extra an extra option to choose from then the re-​ordering defaults to option C. We picked B which has steak and duck on, as they didn’t have any duck they gave us an extra cut of steak.
I was slgihtly annoyed that they starting cooking the meat for us instead of being able to play with ourswelves. Turns out that the scissors were extra blunt and really tricky to use though, although the server made it look really easy. There was plenty of food and enough time to order an extra 3 times (although only 2 items each time). All the food was really tasty, but it sometimes was tricky to decide whether we had cooked the pork or chicken enough especially when it was coasted. With the orange glow of the barbeque and the dim light hanging above.

Although the restaurant does an all you can eat BBQ buffet, the two times I have visited I opt for the a la carte. The food is okay although some dishes I prefer it at other places in London.
The BBQ buffet at Kalbi is confusing on the menu. They have three different option and after asking the staff to explain, basiclly the beef is not unlimited. There are two options that consist of beef. The cheaper option just contain the unlimited meat such as chicken and pork. Even if you go on the cheaper option with out any beef and add drinks, service charge, it comes to around £30per person.
The service here is super slow. They seem under staffed. Twice my dining experience they have left out orders we have made. I don’t recommend coming here if you plan to eat and go. For a buffet you expect to be there for a while. But if you just ordering from a la carte you probably not want to wait for ages for drinks and food to be served.
The website was working last month and then tried it a few weeks ago it seem to be down. As wasnt sure if it was still around I phone them before heading there.

Took all my mates here for the first time. I’ve officially turned them. They all love Korean food now. We had the buffet selection. The meat was very high quality and the service was brilliant. The location is easy to find from Farringdon Station. Just a short 10 minute walk and you’re in Korean food heaven! I highly recommend going here.

Came back this month for a friend’s birthday. If they have read my review, I am glad, because they have improved, albeit slightly.
Firstly, the menu on the website is the same as the one in the restaurant now.
However, we didn’t get off on a good start because when we turned up at the restaurant, they had somehow lost our booking (we were 10 min early) and our table somehow became lost and was given away. They tried to fix this by rearranging furniture in the corner to accommodate and while I appreciate the effort, we had to negotiate weird furniture to get in and out of the table. i.e. I walked into a ceiling lamp a few times, and also the extraction fan was not at the correct location on our table.
Nevertheless, it also seems that the attitude to the menu has slightly changed. I believe our last visit they let us order from Menu A and C but this time the whole table could only order one menu.
Well menu C had pork and chicken only. But you can have unlimited servings and so we went for this one. Although I must point out it is severely weird to have a meat feast only to lack the delicious beef that we would usually have at BBQ. The spicy pork is the best and BE WARNED if you attempt to order the pork collar. We had 4 huge slices of meat and the meat was not the most tender meat ever and it took some hard work to try and finish this.
We also had the pajeon (lack of seafood), kimchijeon (not a nice taste), kkanpoongi (bit dry) and bibimbap and again, these were not the most impressive but it does feed the belly.
This time they let us pay by credit card no extra charge.
The service was once again horrendously slow because of lack of staff but we have already expected this.

This place is a joke I live in Los Angeles and this place isn’t even as good as our worst place. It was laughable that they don’t even have gas grills they use electric grills that don’t get hot enough. I did not do the all you can eat buffet I decided to do get the dishes separately and I could not believe they charge you for all the small side dishes that you would normally get free with your dishes and I mean every single one. Very dissatisfied and I eat Korean BBQ all the time. Look for another place.

I hate to give Kalbi such a low rating because the food is always really good. However, every time I order delivery it takes a disappointingly long time to receive our order. My boyfriend and I ordered delivery tonight and it took 1 ½ hours before it was delivered to our apartment. I called the restaurant an hour after placing the order and they said the food was ready but they were waiting for the delivery driver to come back. So the food is just setting out and getting cold? And the driver hasn’t even left with it? They could have at least sent along a coupon for a future discount to encourage us to come back. I might consider going in person but will need to look for a new spot to order delivery from if it is going to take anywhere from 1 — 1.5 hours to receive the food.

For two years I’ve avoided going to Korean BBQ because I generally don’t think the Asian food in London is that great. But the yearning for it came so we tried this place during the week as they have a special price for their buffet.
I liked their interior design of dark/​black wood and modern grills set in the tables, and the service was good, even though the waitress had me hang up my own jacket, which was so weird for such a nice place.
I was so disappointed, and almost insulted to hear that the appetisers like the radish and kimchi were not included. What kind of Korean restaurant does not offer free appetisers? Some restaurants even provide more than one serving… unbelievable!
The buffet was really confusing. We came specifically on a Wednesday because we wanted the £20 option but we ended up choosing the £23 buffet because you just don’t get much with the other one. Not only doesn’t it include the appetisers, it doesn’t even include drinks!
Some of the first meats were dry but others like the pork belly, spicy chicken and ribs were so juicy and delicious. The bibimbab and japchae were amazing too, my favourite was the japchae.
Overall the food was good but please include drinks or at the very least the appetisers. That would be the reason I won’t come back because I ended up paying more than £40 and I honestly felt cheated.

I’d been craving Korean BBQ for a while and had never been in London, so after some research, this place came up on some lists of Korean restaurants that are not in zone 3 or 4. My friends and I decided to come on a Wednesday to take advantage of slightly discounted prices for the buffet available Monday to Wednesday. The menu is a bit complex but basically there are 3 options: A, B, and C, and they correspond to different prices (26.90, 23.90, and 20.90 pounds respectively) and meat options. If you choose A, you choose from the list of meats in A and B for the first round, and choose from C for the second round; if you choose B, you only get to choose from B for the first round, and C for the second round. So it’s not really all you can eat, nor a buffet… but it is certainly more than enough food, as we only ordered 1 out of 3 starters and 2 out of 3 meats the second time around and you are charged for leftover food.
I couldn’t believe that the typical Korean small dishes weren’t included in the buffet, and we felt like we needed some vegetables so decided to order them anyway. Like, no automatic kimchi?! We wanted the spinach and the bean sprouts as well, so the waitress suggested that we get the Namul Set, which comes with those two dishes and radish. What we really wanted was the kimchi so she offered to substitute the kimchi for the radish dish, but when it all came, we had all four of those and a salad so it all worked out. For the starters that were part of the buffet, we got the japchae (twice), which was served steaming hot and definitely a crowd pleaser. The first time around we also ordered the Korean seafood pancake pajeon, which was really good, and the chicken karaage, but there were only four pieces (to split between four people) and it was fairly missable.
Of the meats, we ordered the sirloin steak, LA Kalbi, short rib and duck bulgogi from menu B, and the spicy pork and pork belly from menu C. I was very confused, because I thought kalbi was the short rib, but it turned out to be thin pieces of beef that were very dry when cooked. I was also disappointed by the pork belly, which was not marinated and what they put on the grill looked like long strips of bacon, and tasted like it too. I was really impressed by the spicy pork and the duck bulgogi, which were well flavoured and exceptionally tasty. The short rib was the famous Korean BBQ that I had imagined, and was very good, though we only got 3 pieces and I wish there had been more. The sirloin steak was decent but also a bit dry.
The BBQ also came with a few vegetables like carrots, mushrooms, and courgette, which was unexpected but much appreciated. And I was expecting that we would have to cook the meat ourselves, but our server was great and did pretty much everything for us, from telling us when things were ready, cutting pieces of meat with a pair of scissors and putting it on our plates, and cleaning the grill in between rounds. The raw meat is placed on a tray on a wheely cart and isn’t on the table, so you don’t have to touch/​deal with it at all. The BBQ grill is also very modern and wasn’t too hot and didn’t spray oil or anything like that.
Overall I was very impressed by the experience and had a lot of fun (and a lot to eat). I had read in some prior reviews about people who had to pay a surcharge for credit cards, but that also wasn’t the case and I was able to pay with AmEx. And the menu there was exactly the same as the one online, so I think the problems that people have complained about in the past have now been fixed. I would like to hope that our reviews get taken into account and are responsible for such improvements!

Good but not amazing. Slow, albeit friendly service. I really like the fried chicken.

Such a disappointing evening at Kalbi Korean BBQ restaurant dining on inferior food with slow and inattentive service.
Our group of eight gathered at Kalbi expecting to enjoy a Korean BBQ buffet meal as advertised on the website. To our surprise the BBQ buffet menus at the restaurant were completely different to those on the restaurant website. The prices are higher and the choices are much more restricted. Fortunately for the restaurant manager they decided to offer our table the menu as advertised on their website without much objection but this wasted over 20 minutes of our time! NOTE that the wrong misleading menu is still on the restaurant’s website even a week after our meal? Is this their marketing ploy to lure unsuspecting diners?
1) Menu
Of the 3 available buffet menus we planned to choose menu A £26.90 (mon-​wed), this is the most expensive menu supposedly offering the most meat & appetiser selections (see photo for details). For menu A we expected to be able to choose 8 types of BBQ meat and 5 out of 13 appetisers.
The actual menu A at the restaurant only allowed 4 BBQ meats, that is half the advertised quantity! Only 3 dishes out of a considerably fewer number of appetisers are allowed on the actual menu A. The side dishes are optional extras, the price of these were higher in the restaurant than on the website.
2) Food
Appetisers — yang yum prawn, royal tobokki, yang yum chicken, pork rib, seafood pancake.
Most notable was the seafood pancake for the distinct lack of seafood. The texture was thick & rubbery tasting of what I would imagine reheated cheap frozen microwaved pancake consisting of flour and spring onion without seasoning to taste like! I normally try hard not to waste food but the pancake tasted so awful I could not eat more than 2 small bites.
Meat — the rib eye and sirloin steaks were frozen tough and lacked flavour.
3) Service
Service was slow to the point that the grills were burning empty of any meat for long periods of time. Note that there is only 90 minutes of ordering for the BBQ buffet.
Unlike other Korean restaurants, the servers did not operate the barbecues for us, we had to BBQ the meat ourselves.
When I observed that the fried chicken starter was sprinkled with nuts, I asked a waiter whether any of the other dishes contained nuts. He left presumably to consult the chef but never returned to answer my question!!!
4) Extortionate Credit Card Surcharge
There is an unadvertised 10% surcharge for card payments, such a rip of for customers and HMRC! Forcing diners to waste time to leave the restaurant to get cash from the ATM to avoid the surcharge, this caused some people to miss their train home.
5) Overcharging
Finally once everyone had sufficient cash to pay, upon checking the bill it turned out that they charged us for 10 pints of beer instead of 6. At a hefty £5.90 per pint that’s an overcharge of almost £24! The staff did not acknowledge their mistake until the manager said ‘if the customer say that they only had 6 beers then they are right.’ They eventually admitted to charging another tables drinks order onto our bill. Again this wasted time to resolve. At this point I could not even be bothered to mention that they charged the wrong higher prices for the side dishes.
Needless to say I shall not be returning to Kalbi, the quality of the meat and food is just too unpleasant to eat. The drinks prices are very high. The BBQ buffet menus both those on the website and at the restaurant are very restrictive in terms of quantity and choice.

Who say no to unlimited Korean BBQ!!! Miss this the most from Asia! I arranged a group of 8 ppls and we were planning to have a festive night, full of yummy meats!
However, we were very disappointed by the night ’ experience.
With the food, I initially were going to give them a 3.5 stars out of 5. But here were what happened to us:
1. We came here as we saw the Buffet deals on their website and there are so many dishes choices. However, when we reached to the restaurant, they had two different menus with higher price and less choices for the buffet! lucky my friend did talk to the manager when we booked, so she allowed us to order from the website menu with the original price. But it wasted us half an hour as they were so slow to just get the manager out!
2. After we efficiently placed our first order, everyone was so looking forward to have the BBQ meats. Instead, they served us all the 5 side dishes and Bibimbap first to try to fill us up. And the seafood pancake had no seafood, just flour and spring onion.
3. And it took them 1.5 hour to serve us the first round of BBQ meats, and the restaurant was half empty anyway. They have the 90 mins limit for buffet ，this is so unfair with their super slow services! But maybe they knew they were slow, so they did not chase us to leave.
4. The good meat in menu A and B, e. g those steaks, actually were totally frozen, so after cooking, it was hard and tasteless. So we were a bit disappointed too. But the other cheaper standard meats were all right. So next time, better go for menu B instead of A.
5. When we were going to pay, they had messed up the sum for our bill and it was very confusing. And the beers cost £6 each, which is double of the pub!
6. Then, the manager suddenly told us If we paid by card, they needed to charge us 10% extra. I have never heard of this rule! Normally we get discount if we pay cash!
To sum up: food is all right, but u r better off to go to normal Korean BBQ restaurant with good meats and better services if u have more ppls. But the services here are too slow and inefficient, considering it is a Tuesday night. But the manager is very nice though and I can see she is trying to help :)

Unilocal, kamsa-​ham-​nida!
I’ve been meaning to Kalbi for a while (ever since Nida took a group of Unilocalers here on her birthday and posted yummy looking photos!) I love Korean food, and wanted to introduce the in-​laws to the happy, spicy flavours.
We decided to order a la carte, rather than do the all you can eat menu (mostly because there were so many starters that I wanted to try!)
— Spicy Squid — This was fresh, and pretty spicy. Nom.
— Namul and kimchi sets — I can’t see this on a menu without ordering some. The pots were perfect size for sharing a small taste of each type.
— Kimchi jeon — This is probably the pancake thing that Andrew mentioned in his review. It was perfect… a light batter with plenty of kimchi flavour.
— Japchae — Damn i love japchae, and this was a good version… although I find it quite hard to eat with korean metal chop sticks… the slippery noodles just slide down my chopsticks away from my mouth!
— MEATS: We ordered Bulgolgi, spicy pork, kalbi and duck to sizzle on the bbq. This is the first time I’ve seen an electric (rather than gas) bbq, but it was just as tasty. We also ordered the lettuce to wrap the meat in before munching it. It was looovely.
— Seafood bibimbap — I love bibimbap and my mother in law loves sea food, so we had a couple of these to keep her happy. The fishy version has a clear sauce (rather than the spicy sauce you normally get with bibimbap) so if I come again, I’ll probably order multiple flavours.
Despite me ordering loooads, and including quite a few drinks, our meal still came out at £30 each (including tip) so it’s not too pricey.
Try this place! Mashisseoyo!

My quest for good Korean food in London continues. It’s always find it a really good indicator when you’re at the door of the restaurant, take a nice whiff of the aromas that are coming out of the restaurant… and sigh. This place is going to be good.
I had a couple of friends in town that usually love the typical American BBQ (ribs and pulled pork) so I suggested we try a different kind of BBQ — the Korean kind. I was surprised how big the restaurant was so it was perfect for a group of 6. It was everyone’s first time at a table BBQ restaurant so expectations were quite high from the start.
We opted for the BBQ buffet. The menu is a little confusing so hopefully this will help. You have 3 options — menu A, B and C of which has a range of different type of BBQ items. Everyone will need to have the same option. First you pick 4 items from your selected menu — followed by a selection of starters (dumplings, jap chae, and a few other options), pancake (regular or kimchi), and a rice dish (bibimbap, fried rice or steamed rice). Afterwards, you can order as many BBQ items on menu C afterwards up to 90 minutes. Also, you can only get 1 portion of each — so you can’t order 4 orders of LA Kalbi, you will need to mix it up.
So I thought menu B was the best option so we ordered the duck steak, short rib, LA Kalbi and Bulgogi. The duck steak and short ribs aren’t seasoned so after you BBQ you dip it into the sesame oil and salt mixture thing. The LA Kalbi and Bulgogi was really good — a little bit on the sweet side. They usually come and man the BBQ for you but it was quite busy and pretty much I took over to avoid overcooking the meat. Hey, this is how its usually done in Flushing anyway! Roll up your sleeves and get involved.
It takes a while to get your next order so the waiter said we can order ahead of time to keep the flow of meat continuous. Round 2 we then went with the pork bulgogi, chicken bulgogi and spicy chicken. Round 3 was spicy pork, smokey BBQ chicken and hot and spicy wings — wings were already cooked, you just need to chargrill it. Our final round 4 — spicy pork, pork bulgogi and pork collar. Out of all that, I think everyone’s fave was the spicy pork and pork bulgogi. I quite enjoyed the spicy chicken.
Even though it was a bit busy, sometimes it took a few minutes to get another round of what we ordered but overall the service was really good. Our server was running around all over the place but always greeted us with a smile and checked in quite frequently to see if we had everything we needed. I don’t think they were very strict with the time limit either — as long as you put your order in within that time it should be okay.
I’m a bit Korean BBQ’d out for a while but would definitely come back when I need my fix.

Dinner
With male friends.
I must say that the facility they have was great as the venue was not smoky. The atmosphere can be cozier at least because I found it so boring and shabby.
I was not sure about the meat quality.
Food itself was nothing impressive.
The service was bad as I thought girls there will cook for us though this was not the case as our table were abandoned towards the end.
We paid around 35 quids per head and ate a lot, thus the quantity wise it is leading however I must flag lack of quality.
Overall 2.5−2.8 stars. I don’t want to give 3 stars as other places earned 3 stars served better than this place.

It amazes me how this place was not completely packed for a Saturday night. We walked in around 8:30 and was able to get a table right away. We were in London from out of town and was in the mood for some Korean BBQ. There are one or two other places moderately close by, but Unilocalers don’t seem to like them very much… so we made the trek to Kalbi and I am glad we did.
We had ordered a few BBQ meats to share among 3 people (2 adults and a kid). Bulgogi, Chicken Bulgogi, Pork belly and Duck were all really very good. In addition we got a seafood bibimbap and a pajeon pancake. We probably could have done with one less dish — we were beyond stuffed when we walked out.
Overall, we had a great meal at a fair price and the staff is super friendly.
I visit London a few times a year and this will be a regular stop for me from now on.

Sometimes I go to restaurants with other Unilocalers, and I love knowing that out of the experience, you’ve got a whole bunch of informally trained food analyzers sitting there, tasting, trying, and experiencing the meal. It can be a great thing for a business, if it goes well, or terrible if not. When Nida K. wanted to do a Unilocalers birthday dinner, and she chose the relatively new Kalbi for us. Thankfully for everyone, we six had a great meal, as evidenced by previous reviews, as well as my own.
Their happy hour is great, as it allowed us to try so. much. meat, and get a discount. We dove into round after round of sliced meats, flavored and seasoned and cooked differently and each one it’s own delightful experience. The additional veggies and sauces made the whole meal much more rounded, though I certainly got my protein for the day.
The restaurant wasn’t full, but it could easily hold parties both large and small, and on a busy night would probably be a lot of fun. They have a sushi bar as well, though I didn’t try any nor see anyone order it so I can’t attest to its quality.
For KBBQ, though I’m a complete novice, I had a great time and enjoyed some really amazing meat.

We made our way here to celebrate Nida K’s bday since, at the ripe age of 27, she wanted to get stuffed with meat. Korean meat to be precise which meant only one thing — BBQ time!
Now my usual go-​to place is all the way down in the Southlands of Tooting where Katie B first introduced me to Cah-​Chi. Luckily, the birthday girl knew of Kalbi which was much more centrally located. I cycled over and completely missed it — perhaps because the big sign over the door says Ginnan. I think that was the old place and Kalbi has been newly born out of its ashes.
But let’s get to the important bits. They have a full menu but the real selling point is the BBQ. You order plate after plate of meat and a lovely waitress/​cook opens up your table and proceeds to sear it in front of you. It’s simple, brilliant, and sets your mouth watering as the rich meaty aromas wash over you. You also can get a range of pickled veggies to snack on while you wait — the kimchi here is quite mild so its suitable to almost anyone but my personal favourite is the lightly pickled cucumbers with chilli sauce.
There isn’t much more to say really. You order meat, you eat meat, and you leave stuffed full of meat. Get the Kalbi/​Galbi beef which is marinated in a sweet moreish sauce and by far the best I’ve tried. We did try a pancake type thing and some kara-​age. The stuffed pancake was delicious and well worth £6 given it’s the size of a dinner plate. The kara-​age was crispy and tender but could have benefitted from a little bit of that vinegary sauce most places serve up.
Ah, before we part, if you get there from 6 – 6.45pm you are in luck for HAPPY BBQ which means you get discounted prices on all your meat. Discounted meat = awesome unless it’s sold out of the back of a truck but even then it’s debateable. All in all, for around £30/​person, we left fat and happy and its definitely an experience I’d love to repeat.

Oh boy, meat!
While we were sitting around, having tons of delicious BBQ meat cooked, the topic of what Korean food and Chinese food and other food from that overall general area of the world is like in the states. Unless you grew up in a giant city of the world like New York or basically anywhere in California, you’re exposure to this genre of food basically consisted of restaurants smooshing all the individualities together into a take-​away menus with numbered items on it (a la the famous 62. General Tso’s Chicken.) Which is why coming to London and getting a chance to experience food the way it was meant to be done is so damn fantastic.
Kalbi is one of the newest additions to the Korean BBQ scene in London and it is delicious.
This is a relatively large restaurant and it would be easy to gather a group of friends together here. We sat around two tables, each with it’s own little grill in the centre.
You order your starters, which consist of little bowls of seasoned and flavoured vegetables (kimchee and radishes and cucumbers and spinach and so on). Then comes the meet you ordered, and baby, order a lot.
For six people, we had about 14 meat dishes. That seemed about right — two to three per person. They come and cook the meat (sometimes with veggies, sometimes without) right at the table, cutting it up with meat scissors as they go and serving little bits onto your plate. The best we had Rib-​Eye and the Kalbi steak, which cooked well and was unbelievably tasty. They also put out an individual platter of sauces in front of each person for dipping — one was meat-​based, one was bean-​based and the other was sweet oil I believe. And damn if each wasn’t delicious in it’s own way.
This place can be expensive. We came during Happy BBQ time (they’re name, not mine) which meant everything was cheaper. We ended up ordering more meat and other dishes throughout the night and in the end, the bill was about £35 per person. Not terrible but high for sure.
Still, the expereince was fun and the food was downright amazing. Worth checking out for sure.

I’m so happy to have found a good KBBQ restaurant in London. And yes, there is a grill on the table. Not to mention their great Happy BBQ prices from 6 – 6:45PM where their BBQ meats are discounted since they’re still relatively new.
My friend and I, both Korean food lovers, stopped by to try it out since Kalbi is pretty close to our school. We ordered 4 different meats and loaded up on side dishes. Everything was tasty and 4 BBQ meats seemed like the right amount for the two of us especially since we had the side dishes. Although it isn’t the best KBBQ I’ve had ever (the best is in LA), it’s pretty damn good and satisfy your craving if you’re having one. All the meats are well prepared and the servers come by often to cook your meats properly.
The restaurant is pretty big with plenty of room for groups so it’s a great place to have a little Korean BBQ party. And, maybe there’s better air circulation here because I don’t remember smelling like my dinner last time I left which is always a plus.