Our visit to Prime Grill had the Missus wondering how Buga was doing. It had been 5 years since our last visit, which was during August as well. And our previous visit was during the previous August too! I had also heard that Buga had changed ownership once again. So, we decided to head on over for lunch.
It was at 1130 and while the parking lot didn't look packed, the restaurant was quite busy. In fact, we waited almost 20 minutes just to be acknowledged.
The workers were scrambling around and I noticed that the group of 6 behind us, didn't even get seated until we already had our food!
The Missus ordered the combo with Beef Bulgogi and Naengmyun (lunch special – $27.99) and of course I got the BiBim Naengmyun ($15.99 – lunch special)
It took a while, but our panchan eventually arrived.
Man, this was not good, the namul was bland, as was the dotorimuk (acorn jelly) muychim. Both the cabbage and radish kimchi wasn't very "fermented" in flavor, and that Korean potato salad needed more flavor.
This was not a good start to the meal.
My BiBim Naegmyun soon arrived.
This version uses an abundance of thinner, very stretchy noodles, which we like. The beef and boiled egg were fine. Because of the amount of naegmyun in the dish, there just wasn't enough sauce to coat all the naengmyun; which was nice and spicy, though it lacked sweetness – sesame oil tones .
The Missus's combo soon arrived. The Naengmyun was interesting, and not in a good way.
While it featured the same generous amount of thin and stretchy noodles; the broth was strangely lukewarm. What happened to the icy-chilled broth; which also lacked the nice, sweet-tangy pear flavor. It was quite sour and very salty, but that temperature threw us off. We always think of Naengmyun as being refreshing; well, this was not.
As for the Beef Bulgogi.
I think you can tell by the look. It wasn't marinated well enough and not evenly as some of the pieces were quite "light" in color. The meat was super tough and cut too thick for our taste. This was really bad; the worse we've had in a while.
This was not a good meal. I have wonderful memories of Buga (under he original owners), as my first post goes all the way back to, yep August, of 2005, when the last, great, Ed from Yuma, premiered his "delici-yoso dance"! It's kind of sad. The place was packed though, I'm figuring all those folks having AYCE BBQ and such. As for us, well, I don't think we'll be back.
Buga Korean BBQ Restaurant
5580 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92117
The wings came with a rather large order of Mul Kimchi, crisp, not overly sweet, a good palate cleanser for fry-o-lated foods.
The batter was somewhat crunchy, but it really got soggy quickly. The seasoning seemed quite mild, but I had a raging thirst after eating 6 of these wings. I took the remaining wings home and even tried to revive in the air fryer, but that didn’t work too well. I’m thinking that if I tried this again it would have to be with some kind of sauce; but based on experience with other KFC chains of this ilk, I’m going to assume it’s going to be too sweet and heck, it already gets soggy-mushy too quickly anyway.
As you can see, the chicken took up only two-thirds of the sandwich surface area, so there were "fowl-less" bites and with all that bread and mayo, it was hard making heads or tails of the flavors. So even though that label said "please enjoy it as soon as served" there was no way I could finish this. I put half in the fridge at work and took it home. During dinner that evening, I brought out the remainder of the sandwich and the Missus and I took out the piece of chicken. Even though the batter had sloughed off, it seemed like the chicken thigh meat was nicely seasoned and fairly tender. 
The wings were on the larger end of the spectrum and were lightly seasoned. The sauce was much too sweet for me. 
And when the gyeran jjim (steamed egg) hit the table, I thought that this would be the interesting test of the service. You see, the Missus enjoys some sesame oil on Her steamed egg. I think it's kind of a Northern Chinese thing. On our 
Man, I forgot how much mul kimchi is provided. These weren't as sweet as I recalled and provided and was a good foil for the sweetness in the wings.
As for the wings; well it's a personal preference; I prefer crisp over highly battered and too crunchy. I enjoy smaller wings with a good skin to meat ratio, rather than jumbo, meaty, and often dry wings. This is why I had enjoyed getting the wings from Bonchon. So, how did these fare? Well, it seemed to be more "sauced" than I recall, though it was evenly coated. The sauce seemed a bit sweeter as well, I would have enjoyed a bit more pungency. The coating was crisp, but I'm glad I had this onsite since I don't think it would have stood up as takeout. The wings were moist, the meat tender, though I did see some black spotting, which can lead to off flavors, but this was fine. And for some reason, it brought back memories of our "KFC" visits to places like 