Insadong — Restaurant in Calgary

We are never going back to this place again until the owners decide to fire the very arrogant and unprofessional manager, Hala.

We were two families who dined on a weekend — my own family of 4 and friends who are also a family of 4. We saw each other at the entrance and did not come together. The receptionist seated us at tables across each other. Tables were not adjoining and we requested for separate receipts.

We found out we were charged an automatic 15% gratuity for being more than 6, when in fact, we were separate families of 4 each and not seated together. That is on top of giving them an additional 10%. We found this out after paying and had to go back to have the transaction corrected.

The very arrogant manager, Hala, was very self-defensive at the onset. We were not even blaming anyone, to begin with. She said she was not in the wrong and instead put the blame on us by accusing us of not saying the families were not together. The fact is, they assumed we were together whereas we requested for separate bills and were not seated together. Hala instigated a very intense argument with us in front of other customers. We did emphasize that we just wanted to void the receipt to cancel the automatic 15% gratuity charged to us, and pay again with the corrected amount.

Hala, in a very haughty and shameful tone, told us, "I cannot issue a refund. Can't you see, I'm busy???" Wow. Just wow. You be the judge.

We have been regular customers in this establishment even before this farce of a manager started working in this restaurant. We frequent Insadong because of the quality of food and warmth of the other servers. That is, until Hala came.

She does not have the right to be the face of this resto. The way she treated us after being loyal customers for many years gave us the impression we were 2nd rate citizens and unwanted customers.

In a condescending tone, Hala even told my wife, "I am not arguing over $10."

My wife retorted, "Exactly. Then, why don't you just refund us the $10?"

With a huff and scoff, she did. But is being talked down to the way she did us really necessary??? Add to that, embarrassing us in front of other customers? It was an error made at the till which we had overlooked! But an error initiated by them, nonetheless!

If there is a way the owners of this business can read this, you might want to reassess having Hala being a frontliner in your resto. She does not have the customer service skills expected of a manager. She should be away from customers to spare us from such unpleasant experience.

We were big fans of this resto until this harrowing experience with Hala. We love Korean food and love the other servers who display excellent customer service skills, warmth and hospitality. Except for Hala.

We would love to speak with higher management or the actual owners of this resto. We have recommended this resto to many of our friends, spent my daughter's birthday dinner here, entertained visitors, and had regular weekend lunches here after our daughter's dance class.

And everything was ruined by this unfortunate experience with Hala. We aren't confrontational people, but do not hesitate to stand up for ourselves when we have reason to.

Your true colors showed, Hala. Somehow, behind your fake smile and artifical tone when greeting customers, lies a bully in disguise.

Customers, beware! And to the other employees in this resto, do not be afraid to stand up for yourselves when this bully tries to...

READ UNTIL THE VERY END TO SEE WHAT THE OWNER ADMITS TO:

Where do I even start? First of all, the food was good, it always has been. No complaints there.

Here are my issues: My son and I went there yesterday for an early supper. We were shown two All You Can Eat menus. The 1st was $32 and the 2nd was $42, the difference being the 2nd menu offered Beef ribs and Beef short ribs (maybe a couple more things). Beef short ribs are my favourite so we went with the $42 meal.

Right off the bat, the server explained to us that we are only allowed one Beef rib each and made sure to mark it down on our order sheet to make sure we don’t try to order more. We decided it was ok as long as the Short Ribs were unlimited. He confirmed that they were. - They weren’t. We had to fight for them and wait hours after we fought for them.

It took them so long to come back to take our 1st order that we had to get up and go find someone to give it to. When we finally received our food, it was good, but the portions seemed small. We completed the order sheet for the 2nd round, but again, no one was coming by. (We were in a hidden corner and it seemed like a lot of staff would check on us - except for when we needed to order). But during the times when we had a lot of staff checking on us, they would never bring what we needed. We had to ask 5 different people to get Samjang and again, in the end, we had to go find someone.

We finally got our 2nd order 2 hours after we sat down, and they gave us only half of our items, and only 2 short ribs instead of 5. When we asked a female server why we didn’t get the missing items, she said “We don’t want you to pay $10 for not finishing your food”. That was when I started looking at the reviews. I noticed that there are a lot of reviews saying the same thing! They take forever on purpose so you are full before you get the 2nd order! But here was the most disturbing part that I got right off of Google reviews:

The owner actually responded with this to someone’s complaint:

Response from the owner a year ago Hi Aira, we thank you for sharing your experience with us. Our servers are trained to modify your order quantities based on how many people are seated per table. This helps our valued customers to avoid paying the $10 left over fee per person. As the All you can eat buffet offers unlimited rounds, you are always more than welcome to order more of the food items you want on your next round. We truly apologize for any inconvenience and hope you will continue to visit us to check out our improvements. If you have further inquiries, don’t hesitate to contact us anytime:)

This is terrible! We are paying for All You Can Eat, but they are trained to scam us and give us what THEY think we should have! And unlimited rounds? This is why it takes a whole hour to get each round, and I’m sure the staff are trained to take that long!

If the owners of this restaurant will go this far to save a buck? What corners are they cutting (health, cleanliness etc) behind the scenes in the kitchen where...

To be quick with it:

Food: 5-6/10 Service: 2 Be careful if you're coming in with a large enough group that triggers gratuity.

Now for the long review. To be transparent, I waited three days to see if this review was worth the effort writing but imo I think it was. I was excited to try this out since my sister and her bf had gone before and said they loved it, and there was a decent lineup of people waiting to get in.

Unfortunately, after they seated us (7 people), we never got our plates, spoons, or chopsticks. We did the AYCE bbq option and although we did get our meat at a decent time, it took almost an hour to get our cutlery. We had our meats done cooking and kept our meats on the empty appetizer plates before we gave up after waiting at least another 10 minutes, so we just ended up grabbing some random plates from an empty table nearby us. I know this is pretty rude and I did hate doing this but we were so hungry at this point and we didn't have enough plates from the appetizers for everyone.

During this time, we were also waiting for our rice, sauces, and little side dishes like kimchi but that took another 15-20 minutes after our meat was done cooking. We had to flag two waiters and hit the staff call button on the iPad before someone came out. The manager himself helped us out but he took another 15 minutes to give us our rice and he still didn't give us the correct number of plates. At this point we'd been here for two hours and hadn't eaten much since we'd been waiting for the rice (we're also Asian and can't just eat meat on its own sorry). We never got our sauces and they forgot to give us the other half of our meat order until we'd been there at 2.5 hours in.

I understand they were probably busy of course, but where we sat were in the booths section (cut off from the rest of the restaurant with dividers) and I could see the waiters actually check up on the other tables. Now I've been to restaurant with on par crappy service but at least those restaurants made up for it with great food. With the way this restaurant's service was going, I expected 5 star Michelin quality but the food was honestly just okay in my opinion. Like, the manager checked up on us twice the entire 3 hours we were there and that's after trying to flag down a few waiters and using the call staff button, and they still forgot half our order lol.

Now I'm not saying don't go here, because from what it sounds like, smaller groups would be okay BUT if you're coming in with a large enough group that triggers the gratuity then I'd be wary. I'm assuming they literally just forgot about our existence since their tip was secured no matter how crappy their service was lol. I could be wrong, but I think I'll be okay never figuring it out. Overall, given the service, the food was just not worth it. (Also included a receipt to prove I did...