I've moved back to Chicago and have been seeking out my favorite Korean spot. In the last few months, I've tried Kang Nam, Hae Woon Dae, and just this last Friday, San Soo Gab San.
Both KN and HWD were lovely. Great food, great panchan, friendly service. At HWD, the only downer was the grilled shrimp, which a companion wanted. They were small, shell-on and very hard to eat. At KN, the only problem is that our server didn't trust us initially to use the grill and poured all of our pork on the grill at the same time, which meant the food took longer to cook and didn't have a good sear on it. Other than those two relatively small problems, we really enjoyed ourselves. We look forward to returning.
SSGS was an entirely different experience. The grilled pork was fatty, hard to eat, and the seasoning appeared to just be kochujang. Boring. The dol sot bibim bop was pretty flavorless, and the kochujang made it only a bit better. We had a shredded beef soup that was decent, but didn't arrive as an appetizer, like we'd asked. The panchan were seriously skimpy - - a bite or two of most things. Probably half of what we'd gotten at HWD and KN. And, we noticed that others were getting different panchan than we were. We watched some of our panchan favorites being delivered to our neighbors and couldn't figure out why we hadn't been served the same. Anyone know why?
The main problem at SSGS, however, is that our server had absolutely no interest in us. I don't mind unfriendly service, but this was unacceptable. I need to at least have everything I need to eat my food. The server was slightly friendly until she took her order (hubby even got her to smile once), and that was it. She seemed disappointed by our skimpy drink order and that we didn't order exclusively expensive dishes (she kept pushing the bbq dishes).
We couldn't get her attention for additional panchan. And, it was difficult to ask her for the accompaniments to the grilled meat - - lettuce, bean paste, and scallions. The meat got cold while we waited and the scallions never arrived. I noticed that other tables had the bbq accompaniments even before the bbq arrived. She walked by our table frequently, and appeared to not see or here us when we asked for help. We heard her talk to others, so we know her English is decent - - language barrier wasn't the problem.
We eat out frequently and have had more than a dozen pleasant Korean dinners in the past few years, so this was definitely strange. We were polite and friendly, pleases and thank yous. I can't imagine what we could have done wrong. When she brought our bill, she didn't even thank us. And, I don't think we'd given her any reason to think that we were unhappy (we'd only managed to get attention to get the bbq accompaniments and a few extra panchan, so we weren't asking her to jump through hoops for us).
We normally tip 20% on the total after tax (95% of the restaurants we go to). We left her $3, which was under 10%. In retrospect, that may have been more than she deserved.
Would anyone have said something to the manager? I can think of two instances in the past six months where something was so wrong that I spoke to management. However, these two restaurants were places I'd dined before and knew had performed better - - I thought the management would want to know. In both instances, management could not have responded more admirably. For whatever reason, I didn't say anything on Friday night.