Wang Ga Ma

Great soup and Terrible servers. The only thing stopping me to come to this restaurant is the servers terrible attitude and no attention which in the end ruins the whole experience. So what, food is great if your servers are going to ruin everything for the customer? there are plenty of other good restaurants in that area anyway. I’ve been coming here since the restaurant opened many years ago, the original owner was notorious to treat customers like sh**. Since the new owner, it got a bit better but still the service sucks. They survive because it’s got good soup and great location.

One does not come here for the fabulous (or lack of) service, but for the food.
Seriously, the service here is never that great. The waits (to get seated and served) are pretty long, but we suck it up anyways.
I think the food here is pretty good. Love dolsot (hot stone bowl) anything, and the soup is really good. The seafood pancake and the bossam is very good too.
The food isn’t spectacular, but I think it’s pretty decent. I haven’t found a place yet with better seollungtang so until then… this is where I’m coming.
I think the portions are fairly big and the prices aren’t that bad,
so I’m not sure where some of these reviewers are coming from.

As a restaurant owner j have a tendency to check the Fraser health report to see if there’s any crazy issues or if the establishment is über dirty. Seems that old owner has sold and the new owner is doing a fabulous job!
My father loves their soups so I’ve decided to go with everyone after grocery shopping.
Service was great even when there was a line outside the door. Food came out quick and hot and always great portions! Will be back again!

This restaurant was our pick for dinner one night during a recent stay at a local neighbourhood Hotel. It was only a short walk away from where we were staying, and via a walkabout earlier, I found it looked rather nice inside, menu looked good, it was quite busy over lunch, so decided to go for it. Based on our dining experience there, yikes, was that ever a big mistake!
The restaurant is rather large inside, with booth seating, and quite attractively decorated in natural, wood tone colours, with large prints and the like on the walls. The restaurant was virtually empty when we arrived (just before 5pm), and upon entering were shown to a table that would accommodate four people. When seated, a menu and two cups of tea were brought to our table. So far so good.
We ordered what they called ‘assorted beef in hot pot’ — it came to our table on a plate, not in any hot pot — along with sides of a small salad (of thinly sliced onion and ?), and small serving of kimchi. The beef offering was a totally un-​flavourful mess — a few slices of beef ‘stuff’, placed on and about a small mound of ‘veggies’, and the whole works sitting in what looked and tasted like a pool of water! The salad was ‘ok’, the kimchi was ‘not’, mostly just a few small chunks of cabbage ‘ends’, with little taste, and in no way representative of what kimchi is, or can/​should be.
After leaving the food at our table, the server never returned until I was able catch her attention, and request more tea. She filled our cups, said nothing, and left — never to be seen again until I walked up and paid our bill. Then the only thing she had to say was — «What, no tip?» — I told her to check the table.
We enjoyed some very good Korean food during this mini-​stay in the area. This was an exception, and certainly not a restaurant that will ever see us again.

Waited 45 mins for food. After many tables after us got their food. Never coming here again

Absolutely delicious broth soups and delicious kimchi and rice. They serve their rice on hot stone plates! You get to freshly cut new kimchi (tastes better). Its my favorite place to eat lunch around that area.

Great authentic Korean food. Food made with very fresh ingredients. The soups and stews are all great — very traditional Korean fare

This is one of my favorite Korean restaurants for kalbee soup and Korean spicy cold noodles in the summer. I only go for these two dishes.

Let us establish that the service here is sub-​par. But I come back time and time again for two reasons: ox-​tail soup and bo-​ssam. It’s not so much that the food is particularly excellent, and it’s definitely not the wait staff, but this place is the closest thing to s[e]oul food for a girl with a halmoni (Korean granny) palate.

Terrible terrible food, not to mention Korean food.
Everything here is small and expensive, not to mention disgusting. I’m sorry if I’m sounding harsh, but the whole experience was just disastrous. Their menu is extremely limited to some soup dishes and noodles… that’s pretty much it. You can take a look at my photo.
Had no idea what to order so I asked the server what was popular and she was pretty stingy and responded «everything». Very helpful. She just stood there until I decided to order a beef soup and a bimbimbap. I was going to add a seafood pancake, but it was too expensive ($ 15 for a small, seafood-​less pancake?)
The servers roll around a dirty plastic cart to serve your food… a bit weird. The kimchi appetizer that they gave wasn’t very good, the cabbage is supposed to be fragrant and flavorful — this kimchi was a ball of salt. The food comes in a stone bowl, comes with a stone bowl of rice which is bigger than the actual entrée, terrible. The beef soup… tasted like MSG… it was even bland! There was one piece of meat and a lot of bones. I was in shock. The bimbimbap has one tablespoon of ground meat, and I’m being generous when I say one tablespoon. I was very disappointed mainly because everything simply didn’t taste good, it was not homestyle cooking or even restaurant quality… it was just really bad.
Would never go back here… I was hoping to find a good Korean place in mini K-​Town… I failed.

I ordered a braised beef dish, which was sliced pieces of beef with some marinated onions and horseradish to the side. It was a decent dish, but the beef had no other flavorings really and so was very bland aside from the onions. There was a broth on the bototm of the plate, so I have no real idea what the horseradish/​wasabi was for. It was pretty bland and I think the beef was overdone too.
The sides were kimchi and kimchi pickled daikon, so that wasn’t really that special either. Somehow, the meal came to $ 17 before tip, which is really not worth it.
To top it off, their mints were in a glass were somehow they didn’t think to remove mints that someone else had opened for some reason. and I think put in their mouth! They were kind of sticky…
I’d try it again since everything didn’t taste awful and maybe I just picked the wrong thing, but the sheer lack of attention to that kind of obvious detail (everyone has to pay at the cash register so how can you miss something like that in a mint dish that’s almost empty?) makes me shake my head.

My friends and I came here after a day at Harrison Lake full of (bad) hamburgers, beach and kayak.
We arrived an hour before it closed and the lady inside told us to hurry because apparently Korean chefs don’t like cooking before the place closed?
We just randomly ordered anything that would fill the 8 of us and wow did all of the dishes fill us up. We ordered some noodles and soup and rice and meat and who knows what. Anything that looked filling and good ended up in our order.
I might come back at a different time with a small group of people and not right before it closed.
I picked this place because of the Unilocal reviews and they haven’t let me down!
#30DaysofYelp ⁸⁄₃₀

Very limited menu, but everything on the menu is good. Can’t really go wrong.
It’s helpful if you have someone who understands Korean (in my group, that’s me), as the menu is not really helpful for those who don’t. No pictures on the menu, and sub-​par translations.
It is by far the one of the best top 3 Korean food I’ve had in lower mainland, and certainly one of the the more authentic — and I grew up in Korean!

I had high expectations for this place sicne they had a specialty. Since having tasted their various dishes, not sure what their specialty is. I found their basic broth to taste a bit burnt. However, I did enjoy their kimchi and radish kimchi. the food is okay. service is okay.

I couldn’t stop saying «oh my god», «amazing», «this is so good» and no I am not talking about my partner.
If there was a 6^th star I would totally give it to Wang Ga Ma. This place is now my official favorite Korean restaurant. I love how the menu items are limited (cook what you are good at and stick to it) and you are the one determining the saltiness of your food. There is a vial of sea salt on every table. Go ahead, be your own boss.
The one downside I must say about the restaurant is that the menu is not very descriptive. For a non-​Korean like me, it’s hard to order based on words like «beef broth soup with beef, beef broth soup with beef tail, spicy beef broth» etc. I took a gamble and ordered a spicy beef broth and my partner ordered a stone bowl rice. I told the waitress to reduce my bowl of rice down to half but she said the kitchen couldn’t do it. *This will be explained later as you read on.
While we were waiting we were munching on kimchi. I must say the kimchi tasted very home-​made and tasted different than the mass produced ones from K Mart across the street. And the mass produced ones from K Mart I had were pretty darn good already.
When our orders arrived I was surprised to find my spicy beef broth soup still bubbling and another big stone bowl for my order. I don’t recall ordering any more food. And that’s when I found out the «other» stone bowl was actually — rice. It finally hit me that rice was made fresh to order! No wonder the kitchen couldn’t give me any less rice. I am glad I had my full bowl because I polished off every grain of it. The rice was fresh and aromatic. I have never had rice this good.
Now, the spicy beef broth. What’s really in it is shredded beef. I call it shredded beef because the beef is cooked long enough that the muscle fibers have broken down hence you see long strands of beef. There were plenty of large been sprouts, rice noodle made from green bean powder, and a type of Asian mushroom that looked like brown skinny branches. This soup base was different than most I’ve tried because the soup was not thick; in fact, it was light and flavorful. I was crying and sniffing a lot because the soup was indeed very spicy.
My partner’s bibimbap was solid. I think it’s the best I’ve had.
The bill came to $ 20.05 after taxes.
I will be back again, again, and again…

This past weekend I spent in Coquitlam/​Vancouver/​Richmond but mean while in Coquitlam I was able to stop by Wang Ga Ma for some korean eats.
As a non-​korean speaking patron I felt that the menu was not useful enough for those who don’t know what all the different korean dishes are called. The menu isn’t large which means they should be able to add photos of each item on the menu to better the service of their patrons.
Lucky for me we had a korean friend that came along with us who was able to translate and describe each dish.
The one thing I really disliked about this place is the fact that the two ladies that work there (not sure if they are owners or what) were not very friendly at all.
It felt like we were causing an inconvenience to them by being there and in my books that’s a no-​no. Staff should be friendly, conversational and at least crack a smile every now and then.
Most of my friends had some sort of broth soup however, I decided to go the spicy cold noodle route as it was a hot day and I needed to cool off.
Let me tell you this is a delicious dish that is so refreshing to have on a nice hot day like BC has been having. After cutting up the noodles and mixing everything in the bowl I was on my way to spice heaven.
The first few bites you can barely taste the spices but once you’re about half way through the bowl your mouth starts to engulf which for me as a Vietnamese person who loves spices is pretty awesome!
Anyway, if you are ever in the area check this place out, forget about the people working there and concentrate on the food.

If you’re looking for a bowl of spicy ook jae jang (spicy beef broth) this is the place to get it.
Lets be honest, Wang Ga Ma has gone downhill since the original wait staff left. However, food is still yums to me!
Service: Meh. I miss the old staff who were friendly and conversational. Everyone now just seems like they’re there to do a job. Not so much creating a relationship with their patrons.
But I do remember one specific time I was really not impressed. A waitress there had a major attitude problem. I asked for another set of cutlery, but she didn’t understand/​hear me and gave me this look of «what the ef are you talking about» and said WHAT?! super loud that other tables turned to look. Sorry, bitch. Didn’t know asking for cutlery was such an insult. Anyways, from what I know she doesnt work there anymore. I wonder why.
Food: The menu is VERY limited, VERY. However, this is the beauty of Wang Ga Ma. They focus on a small selection of food to get the best quality. I always order the spicy beef broth and the beef stew (the hot plate with beef). All the soups come with a bowl of rice in their concrete pots.
AND I LOVE that mustard dipping sauce for the meat! I want to figure what it is!
Price: Can’t complain. Pretty cheap if you ask me considering I am super full by the end of my meal.
Ambience: I wish they would clean the tables a littlte bit better but cleanliness isn’t that big of an issue. I like that it’s bright. However, could use a better A/​C

Ate here once. Didn’t like it too much. Menu selection was very limited, and they seemed to like putting eggs in just about everything (soups, etc) on the menu, and didn’t like me trying to order things MINUS the eggs.
I’ll probably go back again some time to get a second take on things, but for now, from what I recall of my first visit, it was only just so-​so. I’ve never really HAD any desire to go back to Wang Ga Ma.

Packed on a holiday Monday, we just avoided the lineup. In a neighbourhood with tons of Korean restaurants, people were willing to wait for this place so I knew it was good.
The menu is small but full of goodness. I ordered the bossam (steamed pork dish that I like but a lot of Korean restaurants don’t serve). The last time I had this dish was in Seoul, and this version wasn’t quite as good as that one, but close… and a lot closer to home.
I also tried the seafood pancake, which was better than most I have had (just the perfect amount of crispiness, not to doughy).
The prices were very reasonable, only $ 10 for a giant portion (they also have a large size for 16, this must humungous).
Anyways with stiff competition in the neighbourhood you need to be on your game, and although they don’t have many items on the menu, the ones they do have are excellent!

The menu is very small, and there is not much selection, but that is alright as this place is delicious and authentic. My co-​worker was feeling hungry and decided to come to this place to have lunch. We were seated at a small booth where the menu is taped to the wall.
The menu consist of just one page, and most of the items are of a soup variety, and there is a bowl of Bee Bim Bop (which I just had) which was prepared just right. The egg was just cooked, and the egg yolk was just waiting to be popped, and mixed with all the vegetables and beef, and adding the sauce on the side, it was a fun mixing experience. The bowl was a nice big stone bowl where the bottom of the rice was nice a crispy. Also soup came along with the meal. The one thing they do not do with their soups, is add salt, and there is natural salt at the table to which you add yourself, this is a nice touch.
At the start of the meal they also give you a big dish of spicy turnip and kimchi with a fork and a big set of scissors for you to cut yourself. I notice many restaurants nowadays are starting to go this route. I wish they had the potato appetizer which I really like. I had a chance to also try my co-​workers spicy beef soup, and it had the right amount of kick, and taste. I would definately recommend this place to others.
The restaurant is right across from a Hannam (big Korean supermarket) and right in the thick of competition. I have to give this place a thumbs up from many others I’ve eaten around the area!