Koki - Korean Pork Trotters Restaurant

Koki - Korean Pork Trotters Restaurant is located in Dong Anh town, amidst a bustling urban area with many other upscale restaurants. We decided to visit the restaurant on International Women's Day, March 8th. Upon entering, we could feel the crowded atmosphere, and the restaurant has 2 floors. Each floor has a cooking area for the chefs and a dining space for customers.

We chose to sit on the second floor as it was more spacious and comfortable. The restaurant offers buffet packages priced at 259,000 VND (about 10.36 USD) and 300,000 VND (about 12 USD). We opted for the 12 USD combo per person. Our family of 6 was charged an additional 6 USD per child over 1 meter tall.

The restaurant's ambiance is modern with black and white as the main colors. Tables and chairs at Koki restaurant are neatly arranged to create a clean and comfortable feeling for diners. This restaurant is also decorated with many red lanterns, creating an additional highlight for the mysterious space. The grill uses smokeless charcoal, increasing the aroma of the dish.

In the 12 USD combo, you can enjoy all the dishes on the menu, including hot pot and grilled dishes. After grilling, the staff will bring out the hot pot and place it on the grill.

In the 12 USD combo per person, the food includes: beef shoulder, beef ribs, beef fat, beef tenderloin, shrimp, beef tripe, Korean braised pork trotters, spicy grilled pork trotters, fried chicken, gimbap with crab sticks, black bean noodles, cold noodles, steamed egg, kimchi fried rice, mixed rice, kimchi soup, corn cheese, french fries, and tteokbokki. We ordered all the beef and shrimp dishes from the menu, along with black bean noodles, fried chicken, french fries, corn cheese, and tteokbokki.

These were accompanied by various Korean panchan side dishes such as kimchi, vegetable salad, pickled radish, and grated kohlrabi marinated with kimchi. Korean side dishes are typically served in small bowls alongside the main dishes and rice. The meats were incredibly fresh, marinated in separate Korean sauces, then grilled until tender. They were then thinly sliced, wrapped in lettuce leaves and paddy oats, and dipped in two special and fragrant sauces. The rich flavor of the meat combined with the freshness of vegetable, along with a touch of spicy kimchi, truly made it an outstanding dish.

One major plus point of this restaurant is that they didn't use frozen ingredients; the meat was so fresh that you could taste the freshness and sweetness in every bite. The Korean black bean noodles were thick noodles made from potatoes, giving them their shiny golden color, which was characteristic of Korean noodle dishes.

Mixed with black bean sauce with a sweet and salty flavor, it was served with finely chopped Thai cucumbers and pickled pork feet. This dish was quite delicious, and you could enjoy it while waiting for the meat to cook. During the grilling process, it was advisable to ask the staff to replace the grill plate to prevent the meat from getting charred. The corn cheese was another interesting side dish that I recommend you try. The creamy cheese covering the sweet corn kernels, which were juicy and crunchy, made it my favorite dish. It was like eating the pizza topping without needing the crust.

The Tokbokki rice cake, with its hot, sticky rice cakes served alongside fish cakes and spicy orange sauce, was also a side dish worth trying.

Perhaps due to yesterday being a holiday, the restaurant service was slow, with the staff incredibly sluggish. Despite it being a buffet, we all still felt hungry after finishing our meal. I called the staff over six times to bring out food, but they kept disappearing, and no new dishes were brought out. The food ran out too quickly, and all the dishes I wanted to try were gone, leaving me disappointed.

When I think of a buffet, I expect to eat to my heart's content, with everyone having the right to go to the food counter to get what they want. However, at Koki Restaurant, this was not allowed. We had to order through the staff, but still, no new dishes were brought out, despite my five or six requests and complaints to the staff about their slow service. We paid for the meal but had to wait for a long time without any food. Other customers also experienced similar situations, with no additional food brought out, and all the delicious dishes were announced as finished as soon as we stepped into the restaurant.

It was a terrible experience considering the buffet price, which is expensive compared to the average Vietnamese. The service quality was extremely poor. After we finished eating the grilled food (honestly, I didn't feel like I had anything in my stomach), due to the long wait for the staff to bring more dishes, we decided to order hot pot. The beef hot pot was bland, with only two large beef bones and a broth lacking in taste and color, just the yellowish-white hue of stewed bones. It was served with a scant amount of beef, mushrooms, seafood, and vegetables for dipping, including Chinese cabbage, tofu, and a few fish cakes.

Compared to the grilled food, the hot pot was disappointing; the dipping ingredients were lacking, and the hot pot sauce was flavorless. For dessert, they only served a few strawberries for six people, which made buffet guests feel that the restaurant owner was extremely stingy.
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Perhaps it would have been better to go on a weekday so that the staff would have been less sluggish and the food wouldn't have run out so quickly.

          **This article has images and content 100% from me @a-alice!!**

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