Seoul Garden KBBQ Buffet - Highpoint — Restaurant in Melbourne

Rated 3 1/2 stars. If you are a walk in on a busy night be prepared to wait well over an hour, quickly QR code yourself in the queue and you will be notified when your table is ready. Front of house staff were quick and efficient, almost mechanical considering how chaotic this place can get during peak time. I would highly suggest getting there earlier than closer to closing time as when a few things start running out they don't get replenished. The desserts looked ok but towards the end of the night the cakes and fruit left behind look quite sad, dry and bruised by patrons rummaging through the platter to find an appetizing piece. The hot food selection is better than most buffet restaurants especially if there are people on your table too lazy to BBQ their meat. Galbi Jim and Fried chicken were so good, the salad greens were fresh and crispy, the array of meats, seafood and vegetables to grill was quite varied and a decent selection of beef even if some were still frozen, I liked the LA Galbi ribs. There are pre prepared pots of hotpot with bulgogi, seafood and vegetarian varieties, just add your own stock, the sukiyaki was flavorful, loved that. There was an instant Ramyun section for those die hard Kdrama fans lol. Lots of sauces and seasoning to mix and match for flavoring your meat. There is a big rice cooker of piping hot white rice, would have oved purple rice but I don't want to nitpick as there is also fried rice available. there was a Gimbap section along with some sushi. The dessert section was probably my least favorite as I would have liked more Asian themed sweets. The layout of the restaurant was nice, with nooks and sections with booths. The only thing I was disappointed in was some of the staff need to be mindful of the way they behave around customers, fair enough when there's nobody around but when people are still seated and eating, kicking the bin around, chit chatting among themselves while swearing and openly mixing a big bin with mystery brown, rubbish juice is pretty gross and unprofessional especially when customers are still looming about. Don't plan on going to the movies, a bar or clubbing afterwards because you will STINK, their exhaust system is pretty poor, with little to no suction, just wear something you can wash easily as the meat smell on your clothes will linger and so will the upholstery in your car. Also mind your kneecaps under the table, which is basically a block, where there is absolutely no room you have to kind of sit sideways, anyone with long legs I wish you luck. Overall, a semi ok experience, would return? Maybe. The food was decent just a few of the staff practices are a bit...

After seeing it all over tiktok and instagram, my standards and expectations were quite high for this restaurant. My partner and I came here for lunch on valentine’s day and had the 90 minute all you can eat bbq.

A waitress showed us a table and explained the process. But besides this, the service in general was really poor. We turned the heat to level 4 to start cooking but servers would constantly lower it to 2 or 3. I understand that some people may burn the grill and so on but we had two plates of raw meat on the table. And the fact that there was two finished and stacked plates next to us but didn’t take the plates but instead lowered the fire.. I don’t understand and it took much longer to cook a plate of meat. We stacked our skewers and plates until someone took it away 45 minutes into our meal. For our entire meal (mind you, it’s 90 minutes), no one changed the grill for us and the table behind us had their grill burning and had the burnt smell for a while. I would be a bit more understanding if there’s not enough staff but with around 10 FOH staff on the shift, it’s the worst restaurant service experience I’ve ever had. Please consider training them better. Also, the vent above the table is broken… So hard to cook with smoke all over our faces.

The quality of food is so disappointing. The variety is definitely there but if you’re gonna serve all the hot dishes with no flavour, I’d much prefer to see less dishes with more flavour and effort. Mapo tofu is like soup, yusanseul is nothing like the tradition korean taste. Fried rice is really bland and the fish cake skewers just taste like it’s dipped in soy sauce water. We also had the shin ramen cup noodle and the hot water isn’t even working so we had to waste one cup noodle for no reason. There’s a variety of meat options which is good but again, quality is lacking. The only acceptable food sections is really the cold dishes and salads.

I understand it’s for an affordable price but it’s disappointing to see Korean food being served in this way. If you’re someone who prefers variety over quality, then it’s okay but if not, then I don’t...

Overall this place was MID. However, the customer service was top notch. The workers would do rounds quite frequently around the restaurant to ensure everyones cooking experience was going well. It also gave us the opportunity to reach out to any workers if we did need something or any help cooking. They were also very kind and well mannered, they did inform us of when we had 10 minutes remaining to dine in.

Whilst some of the meat selections were good majority of them I would not reach for again. They were very minimal marinated meats such as no beef bulgogi which I was quite disappointed to see and not too sure of to just wasn’t available on that day. A few of the beef selections did have dark black/brown spots on them and not too sure if it was due to being out for a long time and becoming spoiled but I tried to avoid selecting those cuts of meat. I would stray away from the seafood as it didn’t have much flavour and also made my friend feel not too well after eating.

Every plate I picked up to use seemed dirty and all had markings on them which was quite off putting. I would not personally reach for any fried food selections again. Although they did have a wide selection, the fried vegetable spring roles were very empty and not appetising, I would not recommend. I really enjoyed the tteok-bokki and wide selection of sauces to pick from. The ice cream at the end was also a nice way to end dinner.

Fair to say the location is quite convenient as most bbq places are located in the city. I would recommend visiting once, but probably only once, but feel free to see for yourself. So all in all, there is a lot of work to be done to enhance the satisfaction and quality of their customers experience. More so regarding the cleanliness of the place. I would love to see much more cleaner dishes and utensils and also hopefully a change in their selection of meats and...