Grill Jung

Address: Kotchasarn Road
Coordinates: 18.783203, 98.993597

More info

Japanese imitation restaurant with mainly teppanyaki and very popular with local Thai

REVIEW BY MICHAEL (2013)

GRILL JUNG
Even the dogs won't have it

Cuisine: Japanese
Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
Recommended dishes: perhaps beef only
Price indication: expensive considering quantity and quality
Open: every day

Grill Jung, pronounced: 'jang' but probably a misspelling of grill junk, is one of the many Japanese-style imitation restaurants run by a Thai management that are hopelessly popular with the Thai, but that serve very poor food.
I only tried this restaurant because my girlfriend wanted to try something new, and it has high ratings on Pantip.com, a popular Thai forum.
This try out became my worst food experience in months.
When you want to eat at Grill Jung, first of all it's likely you have to get a que number, because loads of Thai are queuing up to eat here. The waiting time could vary from say 30 min to 1 hour, depending on the day and time of the day.
The local Thai seem very much to enjoy themselves, and in a way the Teppanyaki style do-it-yourself barbeque on your table is very similar to the local Thai bbq all around town called 'mu-kaa-taa', be it that the ingredients are a bit different and there are some Japanese style imitation dishes.
Perhaps this explains the success of Grill Jung amongst the local crowd.
You won't see any Japanese in this place, because most of them know better and won't take this kind of imitation food with very inferior quality.
Most popular on the menu is the all you can eat buffet, meaning you can keep ordering dishes unlimitedly. At THB 437 including taxes, this isn't a bad price, also considering that the normal portions are indeed very small, so if you would order a-la-carte, you may easily build up a bill reaching this amount.
Mind you, of course all of your group must order the buffet, not just a few, and no take-away's are allowed.
Now I could already see the inferior quality of the dishes and ingredients just by looking at it: the fish, the pickles, the kimchi, the miso soup. I should have walked around in this place and would already know it's not my place.
I tasted all the fish, sushi, maki, soup, rice and whatever else, except for the meat, and I can say that I didn't enjoy one bite of it. All of the food is of very, very inferior quality, and when you can't taste that, you better get inspired by some other general food reviews such as Tripadvisor and Pantip.com, which may well recommend this place.
Some people think salmon is salmon, and can't distinguish the many qualities that there are. The salmon served here is truely of a very low quality, probably full of growth hormons, so neither very healthy nor of good taste.
The same is for almost everything in this place, though my girlfriend said the beef was good.
The whole concept of this place works very well for the big masses, but it won't offer you any good taste.
Even the way the bbq works is doubtful: they put the fire up high, so the outside of the meat gets burned and the inside is still raw, and for the fish they supply aluminium 'boats' that don't really work well to get the fish well done and don't prevent it getting stuck to the bottom.
I was tempted to take-away some of the food that we left behind as I felt totally dissatisfied with all the food, and try it out on my girlfriend's dog, but dogs are smart animals with a phenomal smell organ and I expect he wouldn't have taken it anyway.
All together, Grill Jung is one of the worst in the group of Japanese imitation chain stores and is the very proof that there isn't much good food there. Stay out of it, or join the masses.
When you're used to the quality that I usually take in the real restaurants, you won't accept this quality anymore.

Salmon on the grill in an aluminium foil: it doesn't work
Beef
Kimchi: already from the looks you can see it's far from the real stuff
Very small portions of rice. Not very fragrant

Location: Kotchasarn road, in the south-east corner of the moat. From Taphae, follow the moat in southern direction, pass Loikroh road until you see a big parking on the left with DK Bookshop at the end of it. Grill Jung is on the parking.