Sa Rang Bang

LOve Room.
Gal bi jjim, dubu kimchee, duk gook, soon du boo.
All Soooooooooooo goooooood!
However, they have the worst banchan ever ! Small selection, not fresh, does not look tasty .
Main menu items are bomb dot com !
Located in sketchy hood next to a dive bar.
Open late nights.

Although it’s a hole in the wall type restaurant, I’ve heard good things about this place. It did not however live up to its hype.
The food is not tasty. They give you small portions. We order over $ 60 worth of food. We had couple bites of the seafood pancakes. Too much seafood and cheap packaged seafood used. We did not finish it.
The short ribs were small portions. We finished that. It was pretty good but again we got like 6 – 7 pieces and it was pricey.
We had to ask for regular rice 2x.
Their fried rice was not worth the price at all. I recommend you skip that.
It’s a small like joint in the middle of no where and looks shady from the outside. The inside is even worse because it’s so dang small and they have only booths.
Service is terrible. Waiters don’t look happy being there and seem frustrated when you ask them for something.
They finally come refill our empty cups as we are paying the tab.
So am I going back to this place? Nope. 2 stars because the short ribs were tasty.

I’ve heard about this place via word of mouth a few times so I’m glad I finally got to check it out. It’s a small little spot down a row of other small shops, but not too hard to find.
I went with my fam so there was 9 of us total. Just from their seating availability, I could tell it really wasn’t a spot for family type of dining. But whatevs, we were hungry so we stayed.
I ordered the spicy pork, as pictured. Not gonna lie, I expected the portion to be a bit bigger at that price point. Figured it must be a quality of quantity thing… and yup it was! The spicy pork packed some soothing heat while maintaining the essence of the pork flavor. The aftertaste was pleasant and urged me to pick up piece after piece. Unfortunately, that process didn’t last too long cause I was outta food within minutes.
I’d say it’s a solid spot if you want to go hangout with a couple friends, kickback and relax. If you’re tryin’ to get your grub on, might be better to look for other options.

I’ve dined in twice and their food is amazing!
I’ve tried almost everything there and there wasn’t anything I didn’t like. My favorite is their bulgogi & kimchi fried rice with a fried egg on top. It goes together sooooo good. Whatever you order comes with a lot of sides like kimchi, broccoli, cucumber, bean sprouts, fish cake, etc. If you ask for a side of rice, you’ll notice it looks different but it’s really good. I guess Korean rice is more glutinous and has a different texture but I love it.
I ordered to-​go once. They opened at 5pm that day but I was able to call & place my order of Kimchi Fried Rice and bulgogi before they opened and it was ready shortly after 5pm which was cool. I was surprised when I got home to eat it because they also included some of their sides :) how nice, I didn’t know they add it to to-​go orders too.
They also serve soju here! My friends & I ordered about 5 different flavored bottles back to back. It tasted soo good and sweet so I definitely drank up but unfortunately it crept up on me & I ended up throwing up outside afterwards but anyway … this place is worth a visit

Came here at late at night. All tables were full except for one empty one, estimated wait time was 30+ minutes. We asked the lady if we could be seated at the EMPTY table, she said «no you guys are only three people»…as we waited out the 30 minutes watching the empty table remain empty.

Sa Rang Bang is the type of joint that you would only learn about from friends in the know. Thank goodness, I have said friends!
The restaurant location is out of the way and at night, I don’t know if I would venture here alone. The inside is only slightly less intimidating than the outside. The booths are covered in graffiti and the lone pendant lights that illuminate the tables are covered in weird Christmas like ribbon.
Service was pretty much non-​existent. We had to flag down someone to take our order and even that seemed like a herculean task. But hang in there, because SRB is a diamond in the rough. And the diamond consists of freaking good Korean food.
We ordered the jap chae, bibimbap, spicy cold noodles with veggies, kimchee fried rice and beef short rub soup. They were all delish, but the standout were the kimchee fried rice and the bibimbap. Both were flavorful and rich. Comfort food that satisfies the craving you didn’t even know you had. This food will stick to your ribs and leave you more than satisfied.
All in all, even though service was not great, the food more than made up for it. Just get it in your head that you’re there for the food and don’t have high expectations for service.

in my Unilocal book there is always an after party after an event…
We ended up here for some bomb korean food, since the drinks kicked in, and this hit the spot.
We each ordered one dish and then food bless it with cameras. Of course me, had to give some basic lessons on how to angle the food for the winner shots. It was a fun night out with some newbie yeeps. After my lessons i was ready to start the dinner with some OBI beer which was served in a huge bottle for $ 12. It was refreshing and can be shared with others.
Food
Jap Chae — clear noodles with mixed veggies, and beef stirred together, in a light sesame oil.
Spicy cold noodles mixed with veggies — there is no broth, but there is a mild spicy red and orange sauce tossed with the noodles. It was very comforting, but i do warn you the noodles are very long and non cut, because it stands for longevity. Great vegetarian dish.
Kimchee fried rice — note that this is not vegetarian. Apparently it has small pieces of cut up beef mixed together with the kimchee, eggs, and rice. Its not spicy but it was tasty.
Beef short rib soup — Unfortunately this was not shared and i didnt get a taste of it, but it looked healthy and yummy.
Bibimbap — this is a very nice picture if you get it with the right lighting and angle. It is served in a ceramic hot pot, meaning its steaming hot! It consists of variety of veggies, beef in small pieces, over easy egg on top, and topped with nori which is seaweed. How do you eat it? Well you mixed it all up, as messy as you can so the flavors are well blended and you put a spoon in it and dig in!
Banchans — We had a variety of mixed veggies such as bean sprouts, broccoli, fish cake, small fish with peanuts, kimchee, and potato salad. No where beats yd tofu house for the appetizers.
Overall the service is slow. They don’t come and check on us, and see what else we need. We had to flag them down for more napkins, bill, and etc. The food is great and we had a enjoyable time. Prices are steep but which korean restaurant isn’t… The portions is big but not huge. I am glad to introduce my foodies to a new place which we all liked. Thanks for reading and kpop on!

Next time you find yourself with late night cravings get out of the taqueria drive thru line and come here for some Asian flavor instead.
Need more of an incentive? You can walk about ten steps into a good dive bar next door. That’s a twofer in my book.
Still want more of a reason?
Delicious noodles. Spicy ones too but not nasal-​clearing hot. You can still feel your face afterwards.
Strange but tasty appetizer/​side dish/​hey I didn’t order this but thank you little samples of kimchi and spicy broccoli and marinated sprouts and… and…AND…
Potato salad?
Odd yes, but hey it wasn’t bad.
Vegetarian? Beware that they put meat in dishes they didn’t disclose on the menu!
Service is pretty nonexistent here. Server seemed to have a slight chip on her shoulder. If I didn’t wave someone down our group might still be waiting. $ 20 minimum on split checks too. Annoying. Ready to pay and leave and the server has vanished. More annoying.
If they gave ¼th of a damn about customer service they would easily be a higher star rating because the food is good and worth returning for.

The only place I come to for authentic & always satisfying Korean food. You can never go wrong with this place plus the décor makes you feel at home & able to have a chill dinner. The staff is amazing as well. Love love love sarang bang! (:

We dines here frequently to satisfy my Korean food craving. Really cant go wrong with the food. Our table would be filled with dishes of tasty dishes.
Our regular dishes that we always ordered are spicy roasted chicken, seafood pancakes, fried glizzards, spicy seafood and tofu soup.
We also enjoyed the broiled mackerel, ricecakes in spicy sauce, jap chae and boiled pork belly w squids.
Honestly, you can not go wrong with any dishes here. We will definitely be back here soon!

I really love this place because of the décor and the food of course! First, the staff is so cute and friendly. They were attentive enough to keep our water filled, but not enough to ask us how we’re doing with our mouths full of food lol.
The food was delicious. Spicy rice cakes were nice and chewy. The spicy pork belly was bomb dot com, and I loved the veggies in it. Spicy tofu soup is a must and they serve the purple rice upon request. Fried chicken wings were amazing! Koreans really know how to fry their chicken.
Also had some mango soju. Was nice and strong, but I’d get a different flavor next time.
Overall it’s good food in a fun environment. Nice and small and cozy. Good service. No complaints! Will definitely be coming here for any and all Korean cravings!

I love the food here especially the sea food pancake and the spicy beef soup… I always order those things whenever eating here… However, I got totally terrible service experience for my last dine in from the lady who are working there. As we ordered the fries chicken, we did not know it will be the whole big piece so we asked her if we could borrow the scissor. She gave us very bad attitude and walked away without replying anything. She then still brought us the scissor after few minutes, but we both felt scared and not confident to ask anything else. After that, we did not see her coming back and even had no refill for water at all.
After this experience, I decide will order take out next time instead if I’m craving for Korean food.

A hole in the wall kinda place! I like to go at nights for dinner but beware sometimes the wait can pretty long since the place is really small. I love there bulgogi, it’s so tender and flavorful! The seafood tofu soup is also really good but don’t forget to ask for an egg because it’s so much better with an egg. I also tried the omelet rice which is pretty good and so is the kimchi fried rice! Service is okay since there always so busy when I go there. Overall it’s a pretty good place for some Korean food!

I used to come here to eat all the time when I was a student at UC Davis. This was my first time back in five years and the place hasn’t changed one bit. When you first enter, you’ll see wooden booths with graffiti tagged all over the walls and posters of pretty korean girls advertising for soju. Customers who dine in mark their territory at their booths. I personally haven’t done so, but it would’ve been nice if I had left one back in college to bring me back down memory lane.
The food was delicious, but the service was not nearly as great. What we ordered:
–Fried Chicken: The fried chicken was delicious! Not much meat, but it was still very tasty if you dip it in the red spicy sauce it comes with. Comes with wings, breast, and drumsticks. For a party of four, there was more than enough pieces to go around.
–Jap Chae: my favorite dish of the night. Glassy vermicelli noodles with veggies (bell peppers, carrots, onions, and mushrooms) and small pieces of bulgogi. A must try!
–Seafood pancakes: Delicious when dipped in the sauce! Savory pancakes filled with seafood and green onions! Also a must try!
–Chicken gizzards: a great appetizer served with huge chunks of garlic. The garlic is edible, but for those of you that are not garlic fans, I suggest skipping this part. The garlic cloves are served whole and are very soft.
–Beef kimchee tofu soup: I usually order this dish at every korean restaurant that I dine at because its my go-​to dish. The server was a bit confused when I asked her if I can order this dish because there was either kimchee and pork tofu soup or beef tofu soup on the menu. I asked her if the soups came pre-​made and she answered with a no. I proceeded to ask her if I could add kimchee to the beef tofu soup and she replied with a no. I’ve never had this problem before at any other restaurant. I was really craving my tofu soup so I kindly asked our server to ask the owner. The owner said yes and I got my soup :) I wasn’t trying to be difficult but it didn’t make any sense to me that our server was so quick to answer that she was unable to add beef to the kimchee soup even after telling me the soups were not pre-​made. The soup wasn’t nearly as flavorful as other tofu soups as I’ve tried in the past. The pieces of beef that it was supposed to come with were no where to be found.
–Banchans: the complimentary side dishes that they offered when I came were: bean sprouts, broccoli, fish cake, anchovies with cranberries, potato salad, and kimchee. All of the side dishes weren’t too flavorful so we didn’t bother asking for seconds. Also, most other restaurants serve their banchans before their entrees come as appetizers, but this place WILL NOT. I asked our server for the banchans because it took our food a little longer to make, but she rudely replied that the banchans are only served after the entrees come out. I’m not sure if this is how they do it in Korea, but I’ve always had them prior to the entrees. So if you come hungry, don’t count on picking at the banchans beforehand at this place.

I absolutely love Korean food but it can be a bit pricey. Every time I come here with my family, we always order multiple items. We always get the bulgogi, seafood pancake, bibimbap, some sort of soup, rice cakes, & spicy chicken. This time we replaced the bibimbap with kimchi fried rice since we’ve never tried it here before.
Chicken & beef bulgogi — both are really good and flavorful. One of my favorite dishes here. I was surprised to see the chicken bulgogi was as good as the beef. It was nice and soft and wasn’t too chewy or dry at all.
Kim chi fried rice — we didn’t really like it here. It wasn’t anything special. We will stick with ordering the bibimbap instead. You can’t go wrong when ordering a bibimbap here.
Seafood tofu soup — really good and flavorful as well. It had a very good amount of seafood and tofu. I wanted to have a second bowl!
Seafood pancake — had the perfect crispness to it and I love the dipping sauce with it. Very light and a great way to start your meal. Must try.
Stir fry octopus with veggies — I liked the veggies on here but I can definitely pass on the octopus. It wasn’t something we would order again.
Spicy chicken — we always have the sauce of the side. The chicken is crispy and goes well with the red sauce, which I love. This is actually not even spicy at all.
Korean fried chicken — It’s crispy, sweet, & tasteful. Can’t go wrong with this. Love the garlic and peanuts that’s topped on it which gives it a nice extra crunch.
Rice cakes — we always order this when we’re here as well. It’s really soft and chewy.
Our total came to about $ 200 from the 11 dishes we ordered and also some bowls of rice.
Most of the items here are tasteful and my family loves this place. It can get busy here at times so there could be a wait because this place is so small there’s only about 6 – 7 tables here. The service here can be better though. We always say thank you and not once did they say a «you’re welcome» back to us. It would also be nice if they refilled some of our side dishes because those were good as well.

Since I loved Sa Rang Bang so much, I decided to revisit before I left NorCal.
I got the usual, spicy chicken, pork bulgogi, and seafood pancake. The seafood pancake is just as amazing as I remembered, ¹⁰⁄₁₀ would recommend ! The bulgogi was alright.
The spicy chicken was ok… The sauce was yummy but the pieces of chicken were terrible. The quality of chicken is probably the worst I’ve had — small pieces, little bit of meat, and hard to eat. If the chicken was of better quality, the dish would be amazing (just like how I remembered).
Side dishes were not fresh and enjoyable, I barely touched them! Service was terrible as expected but they’ve hired new staff so its not one person working anymore!
Overall 2.5 stars :(

This was my go to Korean place for many years. We came here last week and was disappointed, the menu prices are more pricer and the portion seem to have shrunk.
The mung bean pancake was very good but small. The seafood tofu soup was okay, the red bean rice has more white color rice in it now. You do not receive that many portion of sides and what is offered is not that good. I wish the potato salad wasn’t considered a side. The Korean fried chicken was good. Korean short rib was $ 20 and you get a very small portion again. Sorry to say, I need to find a new Korean spot.

What am I to do when oz has a wait list, I’m craving Korean, and just about every other place is closed? I’ll check out sarang bang!
It’s conveniently open past 1 in the morning and if my Unilocal friends say it’s good, I’ll trust it!
Upon parking, I realized its in a sketchy, uninviting, plaza with very little light besides the open sign if that even counts. Because of some Unilocal reviews, I expected horrible and slow customer service but as soon as we walked in, these two cute older women greeted us with a high pitched hello! During our dine in experience, Lee took care of us and she was the cutest! She kept cracking jokes, teasing me, and kept telling me I was drunk. Off of one hite? Really? I’m no lightweight, sister !
We ordered: galbi, bulgogi, japchae, and potstickers. Everything tasted amazing! My only complaint would be the pricing. It broke my heart to know that the price of galbi and bulgogi put together would be the price for two all you can eat at Oz. all good though, I’d still come back :)

It’s 12 am. This place is next to a bar and it’s filled with Asian people. Loud, Too. This isn’t my first time, but it’s been 4 years since I’ve been here. This place is in an area where I don’t think little Asian women should work at without security. It’s next to a bar called the mushroom. Lol. Inside looks really authentic. I mean every table is a booth. And the booth looks like it’s in its own cubicle. Which is cool for your own privacy. Authentic korean restaurants usually use silver chopsticks and long silver spoon.
We were given each a cup of cold tea? It was filled half way. If I was thirsty it would suck. Mm the cold tea tastes not so good to me. I love the menu variety. There’s a lot to choose from.
What we ordered: spicy rice cake with ramen noodles added to it. Omelet rice. Galbi. And Chili pork. Side dishes were given to us after our meat was out. We asked for rice but I guess she thought the omelet rice was good enough. We still asked for a bowl. I always think the rice they give us is wheat, whole grain rice. It’s good. Just healthy good.
What it tasted like: the rice cake with ramen was great, I really enjoyed it. The omelet rice is eggs wrapped around the grain rice they use, drizzled with ketchup, different but it wasn’t bad. The chili pork, my friend said actually tasted like oz. Which he loves so to him it’s good. The galbi (short ribs) is thicker than oz, but it doesn’t taste the same to me. still good though.
Would I come back? Yes. Although ordering individually is much more pricier than oz, which is a better deal. But if I want korean past 12 this is the place I would go to, that and cause it’s the only thing open past midnight.
Ps. Service at any Asian restaurant isn’t good. So I go there for their food:

The barbecue bulgogi is a tad bit too sweet. When served precooked, the juices and oils sit in the skillet which makes it super greasy, but I still enjoyed most of the flavors.
The seafood pancake is so delicious, it’s one of the best pancakes I’ve had in comparison to other Korean restaurants. There’s a perfect amount of filling in every bite and not under toasted. (a common disappointment that I find at other places)
Seafood tofu spicy soup is pretty good too, but overkill on the tofu. Still has a good kick to it.
I also think they purposely bring your pickled appetizers out at the last minute because they don’t want you to eat too much of it and ask for seconds. We asked for the appetizers three times and each time the server said it’s coming out! But they came after our main dish.
Food is solid here. The only things that bug me are the weak customer service and the sketch location.