3 Marcus Ung - 3 years ago
Quintessence:
The service was not very professional. The food was okay, but one of the dishes we ordered was a catastrophe and some of their dishes are too overpriced. The restaurant itself lacks some concept mixing Korean (Bulgogi), Japanese (Ramen), Chinese (Bao) food despite having a Korean name (Yoon-Ji) and trying too hard to look like a street food restaurant. Moreover the food that they serve simply isn't street food.
In detail:
I went to Yoon-Ji with a friend on a Saturday evening. We had no reservation and there was enough space for the two of us and a lot more guests. When we arrived I didn't know they had two floors, of which one was totally empty. That day there were two waitresses.
We ordered the homemade lemonade and the homemade ginger tea, kimchi, the tuna tataki with soba noodles, peanut sauce, sesame and daikon, the chicken ramen with pork belly, egg and spring onion and the salmon teriaky with rice and soybean sprouts salad.
We first got our drinks, which were both okay. Then we got the tuna tataki and the salmon teriaky. After a short while the waitress came back with our chicken ramen and said "you didn't tell me you were missing another dish", which got us quite confused, because we thought the kitchen didn't manage to finish all dishes at the same time. How were we supposed to know we had to tell our waitress we were missing another dish. We would have just waited for the rest. We were in no stress. Since it seemed like we had to remind our waitress, we told her we were still missing our kimchi.
The tuna tataki was quite okay. The soba noodles were well seasoned and the quality of the tuna slices was very good. I didn't like that they fry the outside parts of the tuna (even if it's only a thin fried layer) and that they only serve four thin slices of tuna. This entree costs almost 10 Euros and is so rich that it could be a main course. In my opinion they could just leave the noodles and serve the tuna slices with a marinade for less money or add a few slices and leave the price be.
I did not enjoy the salmon teriaky at all. The salmon was very well seasoned, but unfortunately it was dry. The rice was al dente and it was very difficult to chew. Rice is never served al dente in Asia. The soybean sprouts salad was oversalted. I get that it's a contrast to the sweet teriaky sauce, but one should be able to eat every component of the dish on its own.
The chicken ramen with pork belly is some kind of an odd dish. Why would you cook a chicken soup and add pork as a topping to it? Why not just cook a pork soup? The chicken soup was very thin and didn't have a rich taste. It could have been the chicken soup of any Asian noodle soup. The noodles were okay. The highlight of this dish was the pork belly, which was tender and juicy. The dish wasn't presented very nicely as the nori was just put on top of the soybean sprouts and the egg wasn't cut into halves.
The kimchi was okay, but a bit expensive for 5 Euros. My friend said it lacked a bit acidity, which is a sign that the kimchi wasn't fermented long enough to develop the acidity. Nevertheless some people might prefer kimchi that way. It wasn't bad.
I did not like our service as much. Our waitress seemed a bit confused. She made a few bad jokes with other guests and got them upset. Moreover she was leaning on a table with both her arms while taking orders from abother table.
I didn't enjoy the interior design either. Just because you call your food "street food" you don't have to try so hard to make your restaurant look it. They put a candle in a paper bag which just looks silly.
In conclusion I have to say their food is not street food. Just because it's trendy, you don't have to call everything "street food". Moreover the food is too expensive to be street food.
