San Maru Korean Restaurant

San Maru is one of our absolute favorite restaurants in Champaign. We eat here almost every Wednesday, and the experience is consistently wonderful. The staff knows us by now—and even remembers what our kids like to eat, which makes us feel so welcome every single time. The food quality is excellent, the menu is thoughtfully curated, and whenever we have questions, everything is explained clearly and kindly. San Maru is incredibly family- and kid-friendly, warm, and attentive. Nothing is ever missing, and every visit feels easy and enjoyable. We truly love this place and highly recommend it.

If you’re gonna rush your customers, don’t even bother to welcome us in or take the orders. We walked in and the server (or owner) handed us the menu from behind the bar and told us we can sit wherever. The second we sat down she came to us with two glasses of water and told us kitchen closed in five minutes so we were rushed to order. Food was served after 15 minutes except for dessert. I would give a four star on food if the steamed egg doesn’t have huge pieces of egg shells in it. We spent ten minutes eating before she came back to us to ask us to pay for the food, and also asked to serve us our dessert because "they want to go home and rest". (So why would you take us and not inform us) Right after she brought dessert up, she started asking if we need to-go box while we didn’t even finish our food half way. We took the boxes, kept eating the dessert so it didn’t get melted. At the same time I overheard her "kindly" asking the two girls from the other table to wait for their car ride outside after they finished eating. At that point as the only customer in the restaurant we felt extremely unwelcome, and the water was never refilled. My glass is completely empty (I regret from my heart to even tip 15% with service like this) We started packing the food that we didn’t get a chance to eat. The second we did that, the lady just came to our table and started picking the dishes. My dessert was not finished, she did not ask but put all the dirty plates on top of the dessert. WITHOUT ASKING IF WE WERE STILL WORKING ON IT. This whole vibe she’s giving us is that if we don’t leave in one second she would call the police on us for trespassing. We were there for about forty minutes and we had twenty minutes to eat before getting "kindly kicked out", which is the most unique one and only experience I ever had with all the restaurants I’ve been to. All I have to say is if you allow me to dine in and order I should at least have a reasonable amount of time to finish my food without feeling rushed or treated rudely.

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.

+ JJamPPong was available although it was not shown in menu + Side dishes + Diverse menu items (but nothing stood out) - Servers were not attentive. They did not ask for refills of side dishes. - Pricey for the taste of foods

Our first time dining in a strictly Korean venue restaurant... And it was wonderful and the food was outstanding!!! The staff was great and the (owner/manager??) was delightful to talk to about the menu items and how they were prepared... She even suggested a dessert (a type of milk/water block shaved ice...) that resembles NOTHING like we have ever had before, very ornate, lite tasting, with fresh fruit and different colored sauces... Definitely a place to bring family and friends to and we will be back many times to come!!

Steamed mandoo were our favorite, the sauce was a bit light, but was cooked perfectly for a wrapping with great chew. Bulgogi (unpictured) a bit on the sweeter side, and bang bang chicken was a tad dry but we still enjoyed both, the Beef was of nice quality. Mackerel had a good flavor as well.

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.