Memorable Times Authentic Charcoal Grill — Restaurant in Calgary

So, the soft opening was today (June 21, 2019). I was looking forward to checking it out since it was near my home. My coworkers also were interested in checking out the place, but they were reluctant to go because there were already nine 5 star reviews posted here before the opening day. Being adventurous, I was going to try it anyway and report back on Monday.

I went there with one of my coworkers. It was already pretty crowded at 5:25pm. We were seated at a small table, away from all the other tables. Menu pics were colorful & detailed, and the ordering system seemed simple enough.

It took 15 minutes for the server to come by and check up on us. Because we were tucked away, she had missed us, but she had apologized and was helpful about any questions that we had. That was fine. (Or so, I thought.) This was at 5:40pm.

16 minutes later, we got the order of bbq "buns." That was okay for the price - two slices of warm thick toast with a spicy bbq spice on one side of each one.

It ended up being the only thing that was brought to us. (We had ordered an assortment of meat and tofu skin skewers.)

At 6:45, another server came by with all orders circled and crossed out. She had told us that our order was done (?) and we can order more through her if we wanted. We were confused by this statement, but had figured that she was going to bring our orders right after.

10 minutes later, the food never came. I went up to the front to take a look at what was going on. I had saw the orders on the other tables and also saw the large grill in the back, so it shouldn't take that long...

I had told another server that our food was taking too long, and we could not wait any longer. She went to the kitchen, then to our table, then to our server, then back to the kitchen, then to our server - all with a look of concern on her face. Then all of the servers had huddled together and were trying to figure out what had happened. It was then when I had realized that they had completely forgotten our order...and that was the last straw. We had paid for the bbq "buns" and left.

Maybe the food is good. I wouldn't know.

A side note: the server had told us that we would get a 5% discount off our order today if we posted a 5 star review here.

So, look for the real reviews (not the ones that are trying to get a cheaper meal) before checking...

I try not to have super high expectations when it comes to 1) recently opened restaurants and 2) BBQ places because often times places will skimp out on portion/flavour, or the meat is super dry and overcooked. I was really impressed with this place!

The group of us tried a large variety of items on the menu and they were all delicious (although, the grilled eggplant was not my favourite and was a little too garlicky for my tastes but I didn't really like eggplant to begin with).

For skewers, I tried Taiwanese sausage, pork belly, New Zealand lamb and chicken skin. All were great, but the pork belly was my personal favourite. Everything was flavoured really well, and great if you like spicy (if you don't, they can adjust the spice level, just ask!). The others had chicken wings and they said they were really juicy. Another noteworthy mention were the beef short ribs. I normally don't really enjoy eating short ribs because I feel like I'm wrestling with it just to get the meat off the bone. However, the short rib here was sooo tender!

Seafood wise, we tried scallops, squid tentacles and grilled whole squid. My friends had oysters and said those were good. I personally don't usually order grilled whole squid but I might come back and order it here because it was super tender! The squid tentacles brought back good memories of night markets.

One thing that I love about this place is that it's not only BBQ items/skewers. They also offer things like green onion pancake, BBQ buns (they make the buns in house - tasted kinda baguette ish with the same seasoning they use for the meats). My boyfriend loved their malatang spicy pot and said he would love it as an entree with some rice. The cold noodle was also pretty good!

They also have some cold dishes, I quite liked the pork ear with cucumber, it had a good sesame oil kind of flavour. I didn't even know I liked pork ear!

I would like to see them offer the option for different seasonings for the skewers, as the one they use was great but it may be interesting to change things up! I will be back when...

Went with my wife to experience this charcoal grill for myself. Disappointing in almost every way.

Was met with the unmistakeable aroma of burning charcoal upon entering so that was a plus. That's where the positives end.

We were seated and after about 15 minutes, someone came to take our order. They were gracious enough, I suppose, but it wasn't until another 30 minutes had gone that they came back with the tiniest morsel we had ordered.

An hour passes and we still haven't received our main courses (they write the time you place the order on a sheet of paper).

Then another waitress comes by and asks if we want to order more food. (again we hadn't received our main dishes yet so we declined ed her offer for now, thinking in the back of our minds we'd probably be waiting over an hour for more food). Of course this seemed strange, but we waited.

Finally we got impatient around the 1:20 mark and asked the waitress when our food was coming. This was after seeing a number of diners who had arrived long after us get served.

She was confused and spoke to her coworkers, befuddled. Clearly they had either forgotten about us or given our food to someone else by mistake.

That's when we decided to pay for the 1 (extremely unremarkable) item we had received and left. No one apologized or so much as turned their attention to us to see what had happened.

We won't be going back. I suggest you don't bother either considering the middling reviews for the food from other patrons and the awful service we received.

Be warned, they're trying to buy 5 star reviews by giving a 5% discount to people. Apart from being completely unethical, consider this when looking at the early reviews because they will not be representative of the...