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Bullgogi’s largely automated hospitality will either delight or horrify you, but the food is serious
Bullgogi, a whopping new interactive multiscreen Korean restaurant in Manchester’s Piccadilly Plaza, has arrived, heralding the end of traditional hospitality – again. It’s the UK’s largest Korean barbecue restaurant – 165 covers, traditional tabletop grills at every booth – but has no servers with notepads, just screens. Your gyeran jjim, your dolsot bibimbap, your bulgogi: jab the at-table screen and it will arrive, ferried by human hand. Think McDonald’s, but as a gargantuan restaurant. Jae Cho and his Maguro Group have built an empire of 21 locations across London and Manchester, but this is their biggest venture to date. We arrive without reservation, which is no problem, because Bullgogi is the size of a small planet. We order pots of barley tea and pints of Asahi at £6.90, and sit back to enjoy the Blade Runner vibes.
Bullgogi’s largely human-free hospitality will either delight or horrify you. Personally, I greet our new robot hospitality overlords with calm scepticism. Over the past few decades, I have staggered through the Covid QR menu wilderness, prised my dinner from the temperamental jaws of robot fridges in rural farm shops, and watched with mirth as the robot chef at a recent Soho yakitori joint still required a human to load every skewer into it before performing. For these reasons, I greet Bullgogi with a raised eyebrow. In fact, the moment we flag, via the screen, a food intolerance at our table, a bright, chipper human appears immediately to check through the menu for said offending item.