Banchan A La Carte - Los Angeles, California

Yunah H.

Second time receiving their Thanksgiving catering from a friend. To be honest, it’s better than market bought but not close to homemade meal. Their Korean catering is more quality. Thanksgiving was ah just okay. Their bread was ordinary. Butter, maple syrup with raisins could’ve been a lot better with quality butter, better quality maple syrup. Just made my own with quality European butter, organic maple syrup, colorful raisin mix and roasted pecans. Ended up not serving their Cole slaw and they should’ve put candied walnuts separately, it got soggy.
Rather just used organic baby greens, roasted butternut squash and toasted hazelnut. Their stuffing was also okay, added roasted pinenuts to enhance the flavor. Turkey was undercooked (even after we put it in oven as instructed) we just ate parts of it and made soup out of the rest. All in all, I don’t think I would order it again. It was easy thanksgiving but food was not quality. Wish they would upgrade and add seasonal salad, Brussels sprouts and broccolini. Made truffle Mac and cheese, grilled asparagus, sautéed mushroom, sweet potato casseroles. Next time I’ll just make the whole dinner myself.
Their banchans, soups, entrées are lot better than their holiday meals.

Miss B.

Their menu looks descent for wedding catering but I had the worst experience with them as a wedding planner. Rude attitude, unprofessional, slow communications, bad serive. Wedding planning is already stressful enough for the bride and you don't need another vendor that stresses you out. Besides the quality of food, I personally think it is also very important you pick the vendor that can actually work with you in order to successfully communicate to have the dream wedding you want. The staffs including the owner are very rude together and they sound like they're doing you a favor with every move and not a single moment was pleasant. At one point they treated my bride like a dumb person for not being knowledgeable about what to do for a wedding. Maybe they used to be a good business partner for wedding, but I don't think they can be one and there are many other amazing vendors to work with in LA.

Just like another reviewer said, if you want to be treated like garbage for your wedding you can pick this place.

Kevin P.

Had a wedding this past weekend using Banchan. We selected the most expensive package and had extra servers to handle the meat. All told we spent about $15,000. My aunt is friends with the owner so we were expecting great service and at least a small discount. Nope.

The owners AND servers are extremely rude and act like they're doing you a favor by catering your wedding. Making simple requests like filling a bucket with ice for drinks is apparently too much work and not something we paid for. Really? Is there a hidden package above the highest package we paid for?

I thought it was just the employees of the catering that were rude, but one of the owners (husband, bald guy) was actually at the wedding and was the rudest person out of the entire staff. No wonder the servers are rude when the owners themselves act like that.

The food was also completely out of proportion. All of the meat was gone before everyone was able to get a portion. The only things they brought mountains of was japchae and pasta, of which there was copious amounts leftover.

We contacted the owner about these issues and instead of an apology, we got a page long response stating all the things they did for us and why we should be grateful for them catering for us. We paid for 150 people including all the staff so we could feed them too, but we still ran out of meat before everyone had a chance to eat it. Yet they swear we're the ones mistaken and that there was enough food.

They even tried to convince us that there were actually more people at the wedding than we had told them based on the plates used. Are you kidding me? We have a list of every person and every person they came with. You're going to try and base the number of people on plates used? Ridiculous.

TL;DR - If you want to be treated like garbage on your wedding day and have to do part of the catering's job yourself, then by all means use this place. Otherwise I'd go somewhere else. The food isn't even anything to write home about. Meat was dry, food was bland. Terrible.

Jennifer K.

I wrote a lengthy review on Yelp, so I'm just going to copy and paste that here:

I almost didn't want to write this review. We've used Banchan 3 times. Once for my dad's 60th birthday, once for a friend's wedding, and a third time just this past weekend for my brother's wedding. For my dad's 60th birthday, it was our first time using them, and the owner lady was really nice and did a great job.

This past weekend, my brother was able to have his wedding, which was pushed back over a year due to covid. We were expecting 130 guests, and because their portions are small, we ordered for 150 people. We got the most expensive option, which is $65/pp. But I have to say, I was really disappointed. There clearly wasn't enough meat and they ran out so fast that the bride and groom barely got to have any. Also, the wedding was at MY house, and when the servers came to set up, they were SO rude and inconsiderate. They were supposed to bring ice, but they didn't. So we went and bought 8 bags of ice, and provided an ice bucket. When my husband told the owner that the ice was here, he annoyingly said "put the ice in the bucket and put it over there"... to my husband. Before that, I saw them put some of the wine on the table, so I told the owner that I had some more alcohol to put on the table, and asked if he thinks there would be more room. I couldn't have been more nice about it. But he responds again annoyingly "We're not even in charge of the drinks we didn't bring, so we were doing you a favor. We don't have any room so you can just wait". I was so livid because of the WAY he was saying it. And putting the drinks on the table? He acts like that was a big task for him and his guys.

I didn't want to write a negative review because I thought that the chef lady was the owner (which she is), but one of the servers is her husband and he was the rudest one. There were 5 servers since we had so many guests, and all of them were so damn rude. They were even rude to the bride and groom. I was so shocked that I had to write this review. I don't think a company who treats the people that hired them this way should ever be able to be in business. I needed to let everyone know.

Later I find out that my friend who used them for his wedding said they were really rude as well. Because we knew them for a long time and their food is decent, we wanted to use them to give them some good business after this pandemic. But I won't ever use them again. I regret not using an American company for the food.

Anyone want to know any other details, feel free to message me.

FYI ~ with the food cost + servers + little extra things here and there, we spent $15,000. I don't expect to be treated that way when we spent so much.

Dave

Korean servers are good, this other Indian looking server just ruined the whole church wedding. Was planning my catering weeding with you guys, as well but he ruined for us and probably your company as well. Wont do my catering here and tell anyone else not to. But the food was great. Just need to pick on seasoned servers, not people with bad attitude and dirty mouth. Come on, cuss in a church....

Josh B.

Owners were super nice and helpful. Lots of side dishes available. That's both the white and red kimchi. Also saw a bunch of catering platters headed out the door and they looked amazing too

Maria T.

One of best Banchan A La Carte restaurant in Los Angeles, period! Their Banchan A La Carte style fried chicken is best of the best, I assure you. Reasonable price, friendly atmosphere and servers and nice owner(this is mom and pop restaurant). Go try for yourself.

Sally P.

Food was really great! The ambiance was very cozy like a nice cafe. If hungry, please stop by to have a warm & delicious lunch. Also to grab some Korean side dishes.