San Maru Korean Restaurant

We came during weekday lunchtime. The server was very friendly and attentive. I love their lunch special——many options at fair prices. I ordered the beef soup. Rice was included. The food tastes like homemade dishes and not too salty.

I really enjoyed the pork bulgogi and ojingeo bokkeum (spicy stir-fried squid), but the flavor of the kimchi jjigae didn’t quite suit my taste.

Highly recommend this place if you want to experience authentic taste of Korean food with fair price. I have visited with my parents-in-law, wife, and two little kids, and all of the three generations are 100% satisfied with the food there (lunch special - 4 different soups and chicken/pork cutlets). In addition, you will experience high quality service of the careful and attentive owners/servers there.

We’ve been here twice now, once about 8 months ago and again recently. Both times the food has tasted great; it’s the best Korean food around. However both times, for whatever reasons, our order has been forgotten. The first time 8 months ago we waited about 40 minutes before the host/server came to us to remind him our order and he said the order got lost. I’ve worked in restaurants, I get it, things happen. However today on our second time there we received part of our order and part of it (the pork / vegetable platter) was forgotten or there was some kind of mistake. They did apologize and the food tasted great. Fortunately we had our other food (fried chicken bowl for our kid and my wife’s cold noodle soup) so it wasn’t a major issue. Today they provided us a sweet Korean rice dessert drink which I found very tasty. All of this raises the question to why does this seem to be a persistent issue? Or am I just unlucky? Lol. I get that mistakes happen, but if it’s persistent issue there need to be some evaluation or changes. Regardless, the food is very good and we might give it another go.

Korean spot off campus that is good but not great. The budae jjigae was extremely sausage-flavored to the point that it was inedible to me. I prefer the flavors of when I make it myself or have ordered from other places around campus or in Chicago. My husband got the katsu (didn’t get a picture) which was probably the best katsu of the places we’ve tried in the Champaign-Urbana area. Not as good as homemade, but a heck of a lot easier than frying at home! Than banchan was yummy