Secret Garden

Such a bad service. One guy would make sushi one by one and the line would be too long to wait because they would not make a lot at once. The shasmi is not fresh it is frozen. Most of the meat here sucks it is over cooked. There is lack of servers so they would go around maybe once in every 20 –30 minutes. This place is not worth it. I looked through the pictures and most of them are not there. Such as oysters, cupcakes, Crabs Legs. FYI some of the dishes are not clean so if you want to eat here make sure to look at the plates to see if it is clean or not. Some of them have food stains.

Came for a lunch buffet. This place is called «B1». An old school favorite. Had some sushi, kochi jjang dressed salad, gg plant and bean curd, delicious bulgogi, a little fried rice, and a few other things before a bit of ice cream dessert.

Since my last review, the food game has indeed picked up. However, the service went slightly downhill. Bumped one star up.

The service is ok. The food is disgusting. As a foodie, and Korean-​American, the cuisine is an abomination to our prideful, arrogant, ethnicentric heritage. Yeah i said it, we koreans have a hierarchy/​inferiority complex the size of kanye west’s. get over it =p
For reals though, i couldn’t, and wouldn’t eat anything here.
However, it is an ideal place to host parties, or banquets.
I don’t know how this stuff works. To me it’s just a buffet filled with processed, saturated in salt, and sugar food with a hint of wannabe teriyaki or soy sauce.
The people are nice, the fountain is gorgeous but beyond that, it’s blaah blaah bleeeeh buuurp

The only thing good here is the sushi and white rice everything else is freezing cold. I bit into my chow me in and it tasted as if it was refigerated.

Zero stars if I could. Less than 3 yrs ago I had my oldest sons 1^st bday party here, while it was still good and clean. Now it’s new owner and everything went down the drain. Went there today to talk to the Owner about a party for my second child’s 1^st bday party and it was just ridiculous. The price is still the same but the quality went down, it’s $ 16.95 when it should be more like $ 12.95
1– it’s Sunday lunch and there is literally three tables filled, including ours. The owner told me they can’t do bdays out on the main hall because they are packed on weekends but offered me upstairs, the price starts $ 33pp.
2– the food also changes upstairs. Downstairs is a buffet style but upstairs you get a preplanned course. Not worth $ 33
3– he offered downstairs room but it would only fit 30 people max since we would have to remove two tables for the decorations. This is when I said I need room for 60 – 70 people. He insisted on doing it upstairs, which I told him its out of my budget but honestly not worth the price
All in all, the food is horrible. It is now mostly junk/​fast Chinese food and mediocre everything else. After Diamond buffet opened up a few blocks away this place is empty and there’s a reason why!!! The food is disgusting and The owner is hardheaded, really bad business man.
I’m sure it will change ownership soon and the next one will bring in new menu and update décor to bring people back. Typical korean run business. In the meantime I’m staying away from this place!

You know its a bad sign when prices start going down. Not that I dislike cheaper prices (who doesn’t?!) but prices go down – with strings attached. So I recently came here for my grandma’s birthday and from the last time I’ve been here (which was about a year ago), the food quality has gone down. Not only that, but when I first got there, the sushi area was empty. I had to wait for a good 15 minutes before they refilled the buffet table. Most likely will come back since there are so many funerals held here, but will not be back by my own choice.

This place should remain a secret so no one else has to taste its lackluster food. I only came here because of a large family & friends gathering after my uncle’s funeral.
The food just had no personality and selection wasn’t as big as the size of the restaurant. It’s only good if you have a very large party because the place is quite huge. There’s plenty of seating inside and there’s even a bigger space outside if necessary.
For a Korean place I really didn’t even see that many Korean dishes. Most of the items were some combination of Japanese and Chinese but not really authentic in either, and nothing tasted good. I was hungry when I got here but I still couldn’t eat most of the items because they weren’t appetizing. And no, my appetite was not affected because I was coming from a funeral. I only lose appetite when I’m physically sick. I only went once to the buffet line and that was enough. The dessert items were even worse. All the cakes were super dry and just sweet with no flavor. It seems like this place just tries to do the bare minimum to get by. My parents remembered eating here long time ago and said it was very good back then. It must have gone through an ownership change.
I didn’t bother taking any photos because it was not worth my time.

My nephew’s 1^st birthday party was held at this restaurant on the top floor. In Korean culture, the first birthday is a big deal. I seriously felt like I was at an Asian wedding based on the amount of people and decorations. I was expecting the food to be decent at the least, but it was far from it.
1. Flies flying around everywhere. There were multiple times I had to waste food because of the flies that kept landing on my food
2. Plates and silverware weren’t properly washed. There was pieces of food on almost everything. My cup had brown residue on the bottom of it and I didn’t notice until I was almost done with my drink. Gross!
3. We wanted to park our car on the street and not valet it. Once we parked we realized we had to walk all the way around to get into the resturant. They don’t have any entrances in the front for those who want to enter through the front.
4. The food sucked. I did not enjoy anything I ate while I was there. The sushi looked old and tasted old. The kimchi sucked. The other dishes had little flies flying around as we were getting our food.
This place is a disaster. Save yourself the trouble of dealing with a filthy restaurant that doesn’t even have good food.

Only 12.95 a person for all you can eat lunch, can’t beat it. Fair selection of Chinese, Japanese N Korean food. I notice some good stuff like Korean BBQ ribs are hidden so look carefully. Plus there’s a sushi guy making sushi n creating discomfort as you take the food.
Big dining area, great to meet with friends n chat. They’ve private rooms at back n patio area for special events. Valet parking only ($ 2) or good luck with street parking.

0 star on this place
Dish is dirty food quality is shit
Please do not come to this place if you want to have a happy day

I can’t really complain. It’s a typical Korean buffet. Some of the food items tasted like crap, but there are a few good menu items offered here. I just hate all the flies that are flying around in there. Some of the food items taste like they’ve been sitting out for half of the day. But, it’s not horrible.
Parking is limited but there is valet. If you don’t want to valet, you have to street park.
I honestly would never go out of my way to come here though.

Zero stars… is what I would give if that was an option.
They recently lowered their prices probably because they had no customers but even with the price drop, I would never come here again.
They have various areas such as vegetables, sushi, chinese food, meat, and a soup station. I might be missing one or two.
Almost all meat dishes — the meat was tough and was way overcooked
Sushi — rice is overcooked and fish is not fresh.
Pumpkin porridge — I usually love this and even make it at home from time to time. I was excited because I haven’t had it in a while but it was basically orange colored water that tasted like artificial sweetener. Gross. I think they used powder instead of real pumpkins and there weren’t any rice balls like there is suppose to be. And as soon as I opened the lid, I got a huge whiff of what smelled like artificial sweetener. (Puke)
The only thing fresh was the lettuce leaves.

Oh boy… What happen to this place? This used to be one of my favorite all you can eats at LA… I’m guessing the management has changed, because the food quality and food variety went to poo. They lowered the price thankfully from 25 to 18… But I don’t think lowering the price makes up for the food quality. If you ‘re going to eat here for dinner, I suggest you spend 4 more dollars and go to a nice kbbq. This place is as the same level as a normal low budget Chinese buffet… Sorry it is what it is. Plus there is less choices of food smh

Secret Garden is a SOLID 3.5. However, I cannot round up for the stars ^ above.
I don’t know why but I thought Secret Garden was a Korean BBQ buffet. Boy was I wrong. The only KBBQ meats they have available is bulgogi and galbi — which was mediocre. They also have (random) Chinese dishes — which the chefs cook up quickly behind the buffet counter. You can choose between 6 different options on the wall. They also have a small selection of sushi, rolls, and Gehjjang (korean spicy raw crab). Those are the main highlights…
Right now they’re having a special for $ 17 pp for dinner. Thank GOD cause it would not be worth paying even a dollar more.
They can work a bit on the cleanliness of the restaurant. I found a fruit fly cruising around my crab & fish… /​: Service is a bit slow but it’s a buffet.
A plus was that soju was $ 7.
Another plus is that it’s very pretty outside.
Large banquet rooms everywhere for parties.
Try to find street parking if you can. Otherwise there is valet available in the lot.

For a buffet its not as bad as one would imagine… obviously they have huge selections you can choose from, but keep in mind it’s a buffet for a reason. They don’t have a particular specialty, or one dish that stands out above all else. I’m not saying that the food is terrible, but its satisfactory. But most people’s mentality for a buffet is eat as much as you can of everything you can to make the price worth it, and if you have a large capacity for food then yeah it’s definitely worth the price. The only time I’ll ever take quantity over quality is for buffets.
Its very spacious and nice inside and can definitely hold huge groups of people. Only problem is waiters and waitresses are so far removed from working that it took me thirty minutes… I kid you not… thirty minutes before I got my water cup refilled, and I was the one to refill it myself because I saw where the waiter had left the pitcher of water.
Three stars… would have done four had service been on point.

The OKs — The place is definitely not a secret considering the line of people waiting to get a table. The sushi was ok and you can keep going back for more though the guy making it needs to speed up or they need a second hand. The Brazilian BBQ was also ok. I also had a little orange chicken from the Chinese food section which was barely ok. The froyo machine pumps out a very sweet version of pinkberry’s tart but was ok. There are lots of big screens too.
The not OKs — The duk-​bok-​kee was terrible. The froyo machine also had a disgusting chocolate slime which I can’t call frozen yogurt. Your water glass will remain empty until you hunt down a staff person.

Imagine a Chinese/​Brazilian/​Korean buffet in K-​Town.
Imagine Bulgogi, Brazillian meats, sushi rolls and, Korean fried fish
Imagine a lot of Korean people here
Imagine it decently priced for $ 20 – 25
Imagine valet and a huge parking lot
Imagine leaving satisfied and coming back to this establishment in the future.
Imagine.
JY

This place looks so sad. Came here for a small birthday lunch, and what can I say it’s a buffet. It’s in a super shady part of ktown and it’s a little difficult to find. They have forced valet parking for $ 2 and little fountain because they apparently host korean occasions like weddings, dohl’s, etc.
Food was highly unimpressive, they state they serve brazilian bbq and I’ve had real brazilian bbq and what they served was not it. It wasn’t even well done, it was beyond well done which is pretty much inedible. The rest was just meh, what you can expect of a place that mass produces food and everything is focused on quantity instead of quality. This place became pretty crowded towards the end of the meal though and they had been good at taking away the plates, no one refilled our water, and my fiancé had to go get the water himself from some random jug sitting on some table. They also gypped the goers because they had a sign about a mother’s day discount but had actually charged more later. When we inquired about it and mentioned the sign out front, they said oops nope, and removed the sign and charged us full.
I know it’s difficult for Koreans to find a decent restaurant that can accommodate large parties of people especially for engagements, weddings, dohls, 100 days, etc but I would advice strongly NOT to do it here. It’s not pretty, it’s small and sad and there are some SERIOUS pest issues because there were flies EVERYWHERE, over our table while eating, near the buffet, the fountains, etc.

We celebrated a 1^st birthday part it was classy and set up like a wedding.
My second cousin is Hispanic and Korean it was very nice to see the two nationalities incorporated into her party.
The tables and chairs had linen according to the theme. There was baby pink everywhere, beautiful chandeliers and a table full of deserts at the front of the room. They also had a projector running through out the coarse of the party with baby pictures on a loop for the guests to watch. I am sure this was added in by my uncle in law and not customary to the basic reservation, as was the Mariachi band.
The food delicious and fresh. There many different dishes most of which I did not know what they were called, but being an adventurous foodie I tried everything. The salads were full of flavor and breaded mini shrimp that had a hint of spice. The ceviche was very fresh and really had everything from octopus to muscles, with limes around the plate. I think my hubby ate a good portion of the salmon sashimi, which he commented as being nice and fresh.
My favorite was the flanks of meat that seemed to be covered in egg. I do not know what the dish was called but it was really delicious.
Overall the wait staff was extremely helpful and attentive. There was no one standing around, everyone on staff was busy. They were quick getting to food put out, removed, and cake ready, quickly and quietly while we watched the baby choose her item based on Korean tradition, which would be her destiny. It was very fun, everyone had a good time.
I gave it only 4 stars because of the stairs to get into the party room. We had to park our stroller outside and walk up with the kids. There was no elevator and a number of the guest were elderly and had some time going up and down the stairs to use the facilities which are located in the actual restaurant and a bit of a walk.
Tip: Valet parking $ 2.00 parking in in the rear of the restaurant, the 2^nd driveway after you turn in from Olympic.