Towoo Korean Charcoal BBQ — Restaurant in Melbourne

Date/time of visit: 11 February 2023 at 6:45pm

This was an unpleasant dining experience. If I was rating the food, yes, 5 stars BUT there was a terrible atmosphere that ruined the enjoyment of the food. We couldn't even talk to each other due to the disruptive issues. The main problem was a terrible disruptive table of at least 4 children and 4 adults. The children were yelling and then started running around (for the entire duration of our visit) and the parents didn't do anything to control them. We did ask to move to another table but the venue was booked out (which we knew would be the case because we have tried to book on previous occasions and knew of its popularity). This was our second visit to Toowoo, with our first experience being a very enjoyable intimate dinner at a Korean BBQ. The venue is a dark, cosy and, previously, with an intimate atmosphere. We had two severs, the younger server was very good and was sincerely apologeric when we left (apologising for the disruptive table). The other server always seemed confused and not terribly interested. Also, two of our menu items never arrived but they tried to charge us for them. We had to tell them to look at the table to see they weren't present. Because of the severe disruption we decided to leave as soon as we finished our meal and get dessert elsewhere. Watching the room, otherr diners also seemed to be affected by the disruptive table. For ourselves, during the drive home, we decided we won't be returning. There are new Korean BBQs in Box Hill that we'll be checking out. And we have other established Korean BBQs that we will return to (many of which definitely cater easily fior children but never that disruptive). It will be difficult for Toowoo to guarantee such disruption won't occur again, and an apology reply to this reply won't help especially if trying to move blame elsewhere. For the price we can get excellent...

The restaurant seems to have changed owner and menu since the last time we came at least 5+ years ago. The BBQ is now a gas stove one side and they don’t help you cook either. To be honest, the stove is not hot enough to give that searing and smokiness to the meat even if your meat is of a decent quality.

We ordered a Premium Wagyu set, KFC and a stone pot bibimbap. The prices are on the expensive side. The set (for 2-3px) came with a nice salad (but with reaaaaaaally ugly dressing squeezed on top but tasted fine), a plate of entrees including tempura prawn, lotus root chips, takoyaki (without sauce) and 2 pieces of fried chicken but no rice?!?! The meat was decent quality but for the price I could have gotten better elsewhere. The stone pot bibimbap was actually a bit disappointing because the taste is ok but they didn’t cut the vegetables small enough and the egg was a totally raw egg instead of a fried egg. The stone pot was not hot enough to cook the egg so it was soggy after mixed in.

I don’t think they are authentic Koreans anymore because the experience and food is very different. The waitress was nice but the old lady really needs to learn to smile. If you are just looking for a place nearby and don’t mind the cost, you will get a decent meal. But if you want something nice, there are definitely...

Do not go here!! I’m so disgusted with the service. We had a booking about a week in advance for 7pm, arrived at 7pm and they made us wait over half an hour for our table. Served other people behind us, ignored us fir the whole time we were waiting. No apologies, no sincerity, more just annoyance that we were taking up space while waiting.

Once we finally got seated at the table, it took them ages to take our order as if they were avoiding us. The food we ordered wasn’t bad, although half the side dishes on our friends plate weren’t there. A person in our party ordered a beer and it was completely frozen, so they replaced it but tried to charge us for the frozen beer on the way out. We spent 15 minutes arguing with the manager (?) who was a rude aggressive lady, and more servers kept coming to help argue with us. When we pointed out not only was the beer frozen, but we had been waiting for over 30 minutes prior with no apologies, the young server chimed in claiming it had nothing to do with that. Yes it does, it’s the principle. They never took responsibility for their poor service, inability to organise the most basic of bookings, or their lack of proper customer service. Don’t bother going here, there’s better places with better service...