Great food, lunch specials, and the owner is incredibly friendly. Will definitely be back.

One of the best restaurants in Ithaca. Nice food, friendly staff and fair prices!

Amazing staff, great hospitality, really good food. You definitely have to come here.

Cheap, authentic, overall great restaurant. Steamed dumpings are great appetizer.

Was very happy with the vegetable dish I got and the friendliness of the employees.

Best Korean food around! Very authentic and tastes amazing.

Good food for and reasonably priced. Would visit again.

Koko is the best Korean restaurant in Ithaca hands down!! I am here at least once a week!!

Service was friendly and fast. The food was delicious!

The owner is the nicest, sweetest lady ever and the food is awesome.

Lunch was great!!

Great Dolsot Bimimbap!! Nice service, nice atmosphere! There's a reason why this place is always busy! Delicious and reasonable prices!

I still dream about this place 10 years later. The Ra Boki is one of the best meals I’ve ever had

My FAVORITE collegetown comfort spot!! Pretty decent pricing for the food :)

I highly recommend the lunch boxes here. They are very good value for money in this part of town. The chicken katsu is also very good.

Even open on Memorial Day. Good service, good food, fair price. Just the owner isn’t fluent in English. But that’s all right, nothing goes wrong with the ordering!

Best Korean restaurant in Ithaca by my lights. The food is delicious, there's banchan on the table and the people are friendly.

Super kind and clean! Very nice and accommodating, I had the vegan version of the bibim bap with tofu and no egg, it was delicious!

The food was really good. The owner was the friendliest person I've seen in collegetown. The service was fast and friendly. Get the rice punch!

Been going there for years and I love the food! It's my favorite restaurant in Ithaca.

Very good food and very good deal. Like their fried chicken wings and the Korean food is very authentic. Strongly recommend

The food is very good, can get busy during lunch during semesters. One of the best in the collegetown!

The best restaurant in Ithaca. The perfect place to have a cozy meal. Service is amazing and the owner has the best hospitality. Get the Kalbi, it’s AMAZING.

Ambiance is good, plates and utensils are good. Service is quick, little portions of Korean appetizers were fresh, food is delicious, portion is reasonable, and prices are good. Will definitely go back and would recommend to anyone deciding whether to go or not.

Great food and good service! Loved it. Definitely going to come back 🤗

They have bento boxes available for lunch, and I love that option! You usually get salad, jap chai, rice with sunny side up egg, a dumpling, misu soup, and half an orange with your choice of protein. Prices are also affordable. They also bring sides for the table. I recommend just walking to the front desk and paying after you are done if you don't mind that and you are in a hurry.

Authentic hot stone bimim bap. Amazing food. Owner is awesome!

Firstly, lots of food are served. Jam-pong was awesome and bibimbap was good. Secondly, people in the restaurant were kind and nice. Finally, price was reasonable. As quantity was great, I did not feel that price was expensive.

FANTASTIC red sauce chicken wings, genuinely easily some of the best wings ive ever had. rest of the food ive had is also good. nice little spot, only complaint would be that the service felt a little rushed

Not sure why this is only 4 Star. Food was super delicious! The bibimbop was really good but the other dishes were amazing. The ramen was nice and spicy. The udon noodles were 5 Star. The best of all what the pancakes. So delicious we ordered seconds.

Service is extremely attentive and fast even in during their busy dinner rush. The staff is helpful with explaining the menu and the food was served at our table within minutes. Great menu to choose from and the food was delicious.

Cady Fontana

We took a chance on a new spot for us, and were happy we did! The portions were large, fresh and super hot, and the prices were lower than downtown. My meal was a delight.

R K

Had late lunch with friends. I had a really good soup I think it was a sundubu jigae. I highly recommend to eat slowly as it was boiling hot and awesome taste. Friendly staffs and really good/affordable food.

지효

The owner was soso nice!! Love the new cafe reminded me of korea

Pu Sheng Wei

The Korean fried chicken is delicious, and their other Korean dishes are fantastic too

Naien HE

This place is amazing! Don’t be turned off by the mediocre review (I seriously don’t understand why), best Korean food in collage town.

Thomas Griebel

Came here for a group field trip for dinner and had an excellent meal here. Service here was quick and easy and prices seem reasonable compared to other Asian places that I’ve been to. Our food we all enjoyed are meals and we really liked the overall presentation of them, especially the meals with eggs.

Anthea Emerson

Love this place. Staff is nice. Dining room is clean. My mother has very restricted diet and even she is able to find something good to eat here. Big variety of Korean favorites and the food is always fresh and delicious

Ros B

Probably the best Korean food in Collegetown. Service is pretty quick and the servers/owner are very friendly. The food is very affordable (especially if you're used to prices elsewhere like NYC's ktown) and pretty tasty. I can't find daeji bulgogi the way this place makes it anywhere else. The only downside is the portions are a little bit on the small side and the meat I've had here tasted a little overcooked. But when you consider the lack of decent food in Ithaca, this place is definitely a winner.

Food was good, authentic Korean food. I agree with other reviewers, the portions are small.

If you go during 2 and 3 pm. The food is delicious and it's quiet enough to hear yourself speak

Great service, great food. Pricing is pretty reasonable, cheaper than Four Seasons at least.

Good food and great service. Casual restaurant setting. Great lunch specials.

Very friendly vibe and serviceable Korean cuisine. Their 라볶이 is quite good.

Not bad, food portion can be bigger

Service is faster that the other Korean restaurant in collegetown. Good for a quick meal.

Food was a bit salty and could be more flavorful. Still pretty good tho!

Many delicious options. Service is friendly and fast. Space is a little on the tight side. There are some great vegetarian options as well.

honestly my #1 pick for Korean in CTown. staff is always very friendly. my go-to is soondubu, which I think they do best in CTown. solid familiar flavors in the dishes, which I super appreciate. also the hidden gem of the steamed egg appetizer — essentially gyeran jjim 계란찜 — is super cheap ($3 or so) and can act as its own entree, if you’re in a pinch. my favorite of their banchan is the potatoes and broccoli, which they seemingly always run out of. :-) edit, as of october ‘19: seems as though the quality of the food is going down. service is spottier, and a lot of the flavors seem off or lacking. i mentioned the soondubu earlier, but these days, it’s been very comparatively disappointing: bowl not filled all the way, sometimes not bubbling and just warm (should be served boiling hot), very bland. in the words of my partner, “it tastes like spicy nothing”. also, we’ve experienced several separate order mixups; just today, we received a budaejjigae instead of the soondubu that we ordered. i’m sad i had to downgrade my 5 star review.

Very tasty food and friendly servers. The price was a bit expensive. The tips were calculated including taxes. So when you selected 18%, you're actually paying 20%!

Good food, but can get a bit pricy.

Raj

Budae Jigae. Love this place, come here with my friends all the time. I recommend the chicken wing appetizers, Daeji Bul Go Gi, and BUDAE JIGAE.

Tianling Wan

(This review is based on a previous experience in 2022, I can't speak for what it is now) Very grateful that they remain open on Thanksgiving. Not a big fan of Bibimbap but the Pajun (kind of like pancake with vegetable) is quite good.

HMT

I have been to Koko a couple times and tried Bibimbap with Calamari as well as Budae Jigae with ramen. It gets the job done for Korean food craving, but not as great as the reputation of the best Korean restaurant in Ithaca. The calamari bibimbap had a lot of lettuce in it, which made it almost like a salad. The budae jigae could have more ingredients in it. The side dishes are not bad at all.

Chanki Jo

I had Budae Jjigae, and it was not bad. But the amount of sausages and hams in the soup jjigae was slightly disappointing.

Merrill Shen

Excellent service. Got the Soondubu Jjigae, bibimbap and chicken wings which were mostly pretty descent. Only miss was just that I felt the tofu stew could use a little more seasoning.

Has excellent budae jigae (I order with ramen) and pretty solid chicken wings! Good spot for a quick meal.

I had the salmon teriyaki -- it was pretty good, but the sauce it was in was a bit too salty. The rice on the side was tasty though! Covid update: very packed; would not recommend dining in.

Food is pretty good and the service is also good. I love their jajangmyun (brown noodles) & champon (spicy soup noodles). Their chapchae is one of the best I have had at a korean restaurant outside of New York or Los Angeles. The only reason I am not giving 4 stars is their take out foods. More specifically, they appear to shrink the portions dramatically when you order takeout even though the price is the same. For example, their soybean paste soup fills less than a third of the takeout container. At those portions, the dishes are about 50% MORE EXPENSIVE than Korean takeout in NYC. This is the second best korean restaurant in Ithaca. Just avoid takeouts.

Decent food, average prices, but i asked for ddok bukki and they overcooked it, so i told them and they said they’d redo it. It came back probably 30 seconds later just as sad. It almost seemed like they just gave me the same plate of ddok bukki :(

Not bad food for where you are. Spicy pork was nice. Chicken katsu is OK. Service is OK.

The quantity was adequate, but it was lacking in spice despite asking for a spicy dish to be made extra spicy. I could not taste any spice at all, but the flavor was fine outside of that. They include full tip on carryout which is fine, but that was not stated at any point during the transaction even when their system prompts you for an additional tip.

Amy Won

Was excited to bring my older parents here as they weren't really hungry but wanted to try some good Korean food. We ordered a dish to share and something to take away. The owners didn't seem too happy that we didn't order massive amounts of food, and because my parents were feeling cold we asked for some hot water. I asked twice, and they still didn't bring it out even though it wasn't terribly busy. All in all, I was very disappointed with the service and are now hesitant to go back, especially with visitors.

BullionTooth

I've been here twice now and I'd say it's met my expectations both times, but never exceeded them. I got a spicy seafood bibimbop that was actually spicy (thank goodness) but honestly did not have much other flavor aside from the spiciness. I would completely understand if someone who does not like spice end up very disappointed. However, pricing is very fair. Service was average - I was not blown away (it took a while for them to come refill our water). Feels like an average Ithaca asian restaurant - it's okay.

I used to order their sundubu for lunch to go because it was awesome and filling. I've noticed in the last year that they've been downsizing, but keeping the prices the same. The sundubu was literally barely half-filling the container today, and when I brought it to the server's attention, she just denied it and said that it's full, even though we were both looking at it. Either we were looking at different containers, or she was delusional. This goes for their panchans (side dishes) as well. This is too bad, because the actual flavor of the sundubu is great, it's just not worth the money anymore.

The flavor is decent but the portions are small and the service is terrible. There are better places in Ithaca

Not great dishes. Felt rushed to eat and leave 2 hours before their closing time. Would not visit again.

Carpio Cyprinus

I have to say this was the most disappointing food experience in the college town area of Cornell University. I don’t quite recall the name of the dish that I got, other than it had a thick and dark pork sauce full of chopped onions and very little, if any, actual pork pieces. What i do remember is that I definitely didn’t feel well after eating it. Service was strange, slowly coming and with various missing appetizers and our host was either hard of hearing or just plain rude. I will definitely not be visiting again.

Riya

One of the worst Korean food restaurant. We ordered tofu and beef bibimbaps and cold noodles. None of the dishes tasted good authentic. They never refilled water and handed us the receipt in the middle of our lunch. Thats very rude. Why hush us?

Ornwara Tritrakarn

The tofu's quality is unacceptable to me. Like, I know that the price is just average, and not cheap, but I might even get better quality tofu with food trucks which would be less than half the price of what I paid here. The side dishes are decent though.

Really bad food. Rude staff. And they don't let delivery drivers use the restroom even though we help them make money for there restaurant. Wouldn't recommend

Very small plate. Taste bad. No service. Bad attitude. I would never come again.

They wont let delivery drivers use their restroom even tho theyre making money off them coming there. How rude.

Food quality was so bad I won't even call it food. Bad attitude too.

Very rude people not only that but to not let their delivery driver use the restroom wow makes them even worse shame on you guys

Ordered a 30$ seafood hotpot with codfish. Find not a single piece of cod. All the materials taste like leftover and not fresh... Very disappointed

Ordered take out with my friends and did not deliver two of the items. Called them and they rudely hung up and stopped picking up after. Don't go to their restaurant!

The service is terrible, two people serve a lot of people, the waiter was really rude and barely responsive.

The owner is nice but the guy who works at the cashier is rude and unprofessional. I am the frequent customers of Koko. (Come to koko at least 4 times a week) The first time that guy didn’t tight the take out bag which made it drop on the ground. The soups leaked. So I asked him to remake it and I would pay it again. He refused me at once. The owner was in the kitchen she heard it and told me to wait a second. I totally understood that there were other orders in front of mine. So I waited and got my dishes again. And this same thing happened again. The same guy he didn’t tied the take out bag and it dropped on the ground. And he refused to remake it even if I paid again. There was 0 people in the store. (It passed the lunch time) and there were only 2 receipts on the cashier which means there were only 2 take out orders now) I had issues with that guy two times in a row. Next time I won’t come to koko if I know he is working. Again the owner is really nice. And food is good. This review is about that staff.

I went over there today and was waiting for 20 minutes and when I asked for help the guy told me “don’t you see we are busy” and made me wait and then came after a couple to the lady the was behind asking if he could help her. Honestly don’t recommend very bad service.

The place has changed after perhaps the boss took over the serving process. Very little quantity of the bimbap rice and the tofu stew soup, almost no veggies in both cases..And I tried to tell the waiter about this, who told me that he's the boss and that the menu says clearly that the real dish could differ from the pictures on the menu...When I asked for more rice, he said he has to charge me extra money--he barely gave me anything in the bowl! Really really a rip-off imo. It was not like this at all last semester...but it's changed over the summer. Won't go again!

The amount of food it gives to delivery is at most 1/2 of the amount it serve in door at the same price. I just feel angry to spend nearly 40 dollars to buy just 3 small pieces of beef and pork, ramen and several scallion pieces with 2 small box of rice. If it is that easy to earn money why people are still studying?

Total disappointment! There was a BUG in the soup, who knows if it was tofu or chicken in the soup and the tempura shrimp came with 2 shrimp that were disgusting! We will never eat here again, what a waste for money!

We help you make money and this is how you treat us?? Never again will I ever go there don’t care how much money it will be. Also the way you guys spoke to me was very unprofessional. Is plenty other restaurants to choose from that do treat their driver’s with respect.

I do not recommend this place at all! The food is decent, but the employees/owners can be downright rude, unaccommodating, and extremely unprofessional. They got my order wrong four times in a row over the span of a couple of weeks, despite me clearly stating my allergies/dietary restrictions when I placed the order. I didn't say anything the first three times. When I called to inform them that they had gotten my order wrong again, they deflected the blame and said that they were "busy" and that my order was annoying to make because of the modifications. The owner was rude and short with me and told me she couldn't continue our conversation because it was getting too busy. I called again after waiting about half an hour (when she told me to), but she forced an employee to take the phone call because I'm guessing she didn't want to speak to me. I could hear her getting angry and yelling in frustration at the employee in the background because I asked for a refund and they refused to give it to me, lying and stating that their payment system didn't allow for refunds unless they had the credit card with them. When I offered to bring the credit card in, the owner told the employee to say that they couldn't offer me a refund because of "COVID restrictions". This didn't make sense to me at all - what COVID restrictions were they speaking of exactly? This has been one of the most packed dine-in restaurants in Collegetown throughout the entire pandemic... it doesn't seem like they are taking too many precautions. I've been a customer for almost four years, but I won't be coming here again.

I was served in wrong order, twice, in one lunch. I am not sure if they were intentional. I knew they were busy and I'm not complaining about long waiting. But menu was given to me after a white woman arrived 5 mins after me got one. Water and sides are served later after her too, even I complained. They said sorry for the long waiting but not answer why I am served in different order twice. Sorry, a tiny can beverage, and a tip free bill are all they offered. Sorry, my offer is an entry in my blacklist.

Got takeout through Ithaca to Go from here. Ordered Champong, which is a seafood soup (usually has shrimp and squid, as well as pork, as far as I can tell). So by "seafood" I assumed they meant multiple kinds of fish/shellfish/etc., since normally restaurants will simply tell you what kind of animal is in something if it's only one kind and then use the term "seafood" to mean multiple animals. Turns out they only meant octopus. The one seafood I don't like. No other animals. Gave much smaller portions than eat-in. Left us wondering if they were running out of ingredients, as the other 2 people who got food also had... less than expected. I wish they/the delivery person would have let us know ahead of time so we could have changed our orders or went for another restaurant (especially because ordering it through Ithaca to Go made it really expensive). Very disappointed.

Extremely disgusting that you will not allow food delivery drivers access to the restrooms. You make us sit and wait for the order when you should have had it ready before we get there (not supposed to be after) and we are getting the food over to your customers on your behalf. We are like an employee to you! Do you not allow your employees to use the restrooms too?!? I highly recommend to find a different restaurant to eat at. And drivers, I recommend to never accept an order from this place. I was a customer too and will never be again.

Isabella Chow

As I am writing this review, I have still not received my pick up order placed 45 minutes ago, the order was said to be ready 30 minutes ago. We asked multiple staff members about the status, and they kept dismissing us, claiming an order was never placed. After showing them my receipt and the physical order receipt on THEIR tablet, they still did not provide any resolution and just said a “mistake was made” without any response to remaking my order. We’ve watched them disregard multiple phone calls and online orders, and whole place seems severely understaffed. Do not order from them unless you want a 10 minute takeout process to take an hour! Owner needs to do better

Shaun Felty

Disgusting restaurant. They have a sign on their bathrooms that says delivery drivers cannot use the restrooms here. This is so unprofessional and unethical as a business to do. Delivery drivers are the backbone of America and there are million dollar contracts in place bringing these places business and money, so in theory delivery drivers are customers as well. This is horrible for any business to do, let alone to people they have to establish rapport with and collaborate with on a daily basis. Disgusting. No one should ever dine here until they learn to treat drivers better