BBQ City Buffet — Restaurant in Sydney

Dined in with a party of 16 yesterday, and it was personally my first time here. Our reservation was placed two weeks prior and since we were running late, we had called to advise them of this and they were very helpful in shifting our booking back 30 minutes. We had arrived right on time - not a minute early, not a minute late to amended booking time of 5:30pm. Service at reception was great. They were friendly, knew which booking was ours, and were quite efficient in getting us ushered from the entrance to our table. However things began to spiral from here as we struggled to get service for the next 35 minutes. By 6:05pm we were lacking cutlery, plates and any form of service from staff members. The only thing that was on our table were the beverages which I had ordered online myself through a QR code I had scanned from the table, and this required zero interaction with staff members.

As we struggled to acquire any form of service we watched as the table across from ours (who had arrived after us) not only receive service, but also their food before we had received any acknowledgement. Until now I am still struggling to understand how the waiter was unable to answer our simple question of "May we please start ordering?". We were met with blank looks from both the staff members we had addressed who just looked at each other and ignored our question. Upon asking again he simply tells me to go ahead and proceeds to look at me with his arms behind his back. Confused, I asked if he would perhaps like to grab a pen and paper as I am ordering for 16 people, to which he signalled me to go on. Compliantly I start scrolling through the menu and ordering until he abruptly turns and starts walking. He makes his way around the table and instead tells me that he will "just bring out everything and you can pick what you want". I look to the others at the table with me and we agreed that we just wanted some food on the table ASAP.

The 16 of us sat there, impatient at this point, as we had another booking which was placed 2 weeks prior for 7pm which could not be shifted, not to mention a handful of our guests needed to leave dinner early for a family event. One of us had gone to communicate this to a staff member, to which we were advised they will determine who our assigned waiter is. By this point I am struggling to wrap my head around how unorganised everything felt. To say that I am appalled that some of us had gone home hungry from a buffet, while the remaining 11 of us were placed in a position where we were shovelling down 16 people's worth of food on a 20 minute countdown, just so we could still make it to our next appointment and not be hit with a food wastage bill is absolute understatement.

Needless to say, this experience was absolutely preposterous and a very interesting way to celebrate a family member's birthday. Was this a memorable...

I have been this place for 3 occasions recently. paid 40 for lunch and 45 for dinner. good selection of food.

my only issue is that.. the soup isn’t hot.. I wish that the soup is hot and other cook food is warm.. I had lunch and dinner within a span of a week interval and the food seems cold.

the latest dinner I had was last night 23 of June and the marinated beef was really so tough.. I could chew the meat until the next day. I was thinking that it was only me but even my partner had the same experience. my partner tried other meat, it wasn’t as tasty as the marinated meat but everything was like a bubble gum.. you just had to chew and chew until your teeth falls off (I know it’s an exaggeration but it was really very tough).

this place has always been full, since we didn’t have any reservations, we had to sit outside which i don’t really mind at all.

the bottomless drink is what I like, this is similar to what I have back home. for all you can eat, we often have unlimited beer, soda, different variety of drinks - at least, this place offers unlimited soda and carbonated water to start with. not bad at all.

it has 3 selections of soup. would highly appreciate that all soup should be hot.. not just warm.

for the ready to eat food. it should be warm at least.. I don’t know on how people can eat cold food on a cold winter weather. for me, meal should be warm unless I’m having an ice cream.

i appreciate varied fruits. I’m very picky but I am happy to see a good number of fruits to eat.

sushi. for those who loves sushi.. they have a few selections of them. i had 5 - 6 pieces and I went into food coma.. can’t barely walk back to the car park..

fresh meat. they have good options of seafood, chicken, pork, beef and lamb. my only issue is that the meat is just so hard to chew. i don’t cook the beef very well, prefer medium rare but it was still very very tough.. after last nights experience, I told my partner that I will give a rest in coming back to this place. don’t get me wrong.. this place is good but I find it hard to eat with tough meat..

i love the chicken with some sweet coating.. that’s the only chicken I eat. only had 1 piece everytime I come but there are 2 other more selections.

they have salad, Thai paper roll vegetable wraps (love the spicy sauce).

for those who wanna try, I think this place is good. just need to improve on the fresh meat and heat up cooked food specially this winter season.

the staff are very attentive. they would check if the grill very often and change them without you asking them to change.. perhaps have a spray can of oil for the grill so that food doesn’t stick...

Bbq City in Bankstown used to be a solid option for all-you-can-eat KBBQ, we’ve been going here for years and during covid as well. But unfortunately, we won’t be going back any time soon after our last experience.

Not sure if the management’s changed or what the go is, but the service here was abysmal, there were so many things wrong that really made for a bad experience...

First off, they were very quick to get us and seated and take our money, then came over told us it would be a 10 minute wait before being served.... no big deal, happy to wait 10 mins 🙂 Turns out that was an absolute lie though, and it was actually 45 mins before we saw any food on our tables. If they were honest from the start we would have been okay with the wait, but instead of a sincere apology we were rudely told be patience and wait our turn 🤨 Judging by the annoyed conversations we could hear from other tables, they’d been told the same thing and were equally unimpressed.

We awkwardly watched the table next to us wait for even longer than us for food, only for them to dump raw meat on the table, but bring no cutlery of even charcoal for another 15 mins! 😂 They ended up leaving halfway though their dinner, leaving a tonne of uneaten food.

When we finally got our meat, we got cutlery but no sauce, salt rice or anything else. We had to ask several times to get some condiments, and eventually got random things we didn’t ask for. We’re by no means fussy people, but come on - how hard can it be to bring a plate of salt and sesame oil? That’s all we wanted. When we asked again just to get some salt, it was the whole “wait your turn” situation....

The place was busy, but 80% of the workers just walking around and not actually doing any work. We asked one girl for a plate of beef and she told us there was none left... 2 mins later, asked another guy and he got some straight away. That girl just couldn’t be bothered!

It’s a shame, because the quality of the meat was actually really good. But needless to say, we won’t be recommending this place to people anytime soon 😬 $45/head not well spent.

It also seems like there’s lots of fake positive reviews written for this place over the last few months, which weirdly coincides with when things started going downhill... Someone’s done a good job to make them look authentic, but every review follows the same pattern - empty profile, no other reviews, always naming specific people who served them and how amazing they were.... seems a...