Jin Joo Unlimited Samgyupsal Review

Last weekend, J and I had dinner at Jin Joo Korean Grill at the Podium Mall. My friend K (another K, not me 🙂 ) had told me masarap sa Jin Joo, and when we passed by the Podium branch last month, we saw a sign for unlimited samgyupsal but had just finished dinner at Wolfgang so we filed it for future reference. Well, the future is here, so when we found ourselves at the Podium mall again, we ended up having dinner at Jin Joo. I lost the receipt so I can’t remember the exact price, but I’m pretty sure it was around P559 or so per person. Upon entering Jin Joo, I was happy to see that it looked clean and presentable. It wasn’t hot despite almost all the tables grilling meat.

Jin Joo Unlimited Samgyupsal Promo

We told our server that we would be having the unli samgyupsal. The promo includes unlimited samgyupsal, and unli refills of rice, the side dishes, and iced tea. We got some lettuce, sweet baby potatoes, fish cakes, a salad, bean sprouts, kimchi, sweet & spicy dilis. We were also given a pitcher of lemon water, and we asked for some hot tea and got a pot of it, as well. We were also given some iced tea, which was apparently also unlimited 🙂

Next, our first round of samgyupsal arrived!

The grill was a gas grill, but they put a couple bricks of charcoal in. We must have asked for at least 4 refills of the samgyupsal and more than 3 refills of the side dishes. Service was prompt and attentive. Sometimes we didn’t even have to call our server’s attention, when she saw that our sauce or side dish bowls were empty, she volunteered to refill them.

I was very happy with the side dishes. They were done well and I could tell that they made an effort to do them right, unlike other places where the side dishes are provided basta lang magkaron. The salad was fresh and had vegetables like cucumber, onions, lettuce, a sweet & creamy dressing, etc… The samgyupsal pieces were thick and meaty, and I actually liked dipping my grilled samgyupsal meat into the sweet sauce of the baby potatoes, before dipping the meat into doenjiang and sesame oil.

Summary

This was actually a good promo for the price – quality meat, quality side dishes, good service. My only problem is that by the middle of our meal, I was getting tired of pork samgyupsal because that was the only meat available. By our third refill, even I was feeling that we were already consuming too much pork fat. I get that they probably want to encourage customers to order other meats from their a la carte menu, but we already went for the unli promo so we stuck to our guns. It felt like going to a buffet, paying to eat the buffet, and ordering an a la carte dish on top of it. You just don’t do it because it feels extravagantly foolish to do so when you already have an unlimited spread in front of you. Maybe next time, we won’t order the unli so we can try the a la carte dishes which seemed interesting. The a la carte dishes did seem more interesting than the unli samgyupsal we had… Will we be back? I’m happy with the service, I’m happy with the quality of the food we had, for the price, sulit naman if you can eat a lot of samgyupsal. However, I don’t think we will be going back for the unli samgyupsal. We will probably try the other dishes on the menu which really seemed so much more interesting. For a more complete bbq meal experience, I recommend checking out Mitasu Yakiniku’s P488 promo instead, or Sodam for a bigger variety of dishes. Jin Joo Korean Grill Level 2, The Podium Mall, Ortigas Center Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JinJooKorean/