Arirang Korean BBQ AYCE restaurant — Restaurant in Mississauga

I'm about to say the exact opposite of the last review I just read regarding their AYCE Korean BBQ. I'm Korean, so maybe my expectations were higher than others? Definitely didn't enjoy the food or overall experience...

Their speed of service and attentiveness was lacking. It was prime time dinner and for the size of space they have, they certainly did not have enough servers. They gave us a seat right away, but failed to give us a menu. We grabbed our own because we couldn't even flag anyone down. They have call buttons too, but they weren't paying attention to that either.

When the chosen meats & side dishes arrived, I thought they were going to make a second trip to bring us our sauces, lettuce, and perhaps a small pot of stew. Time passed and they never came, so I flagged one of the servers down to ask about them. Their response was that they weren't included with the AYCE menu because it's mostly foreigners that get the AYCE menu.

I had a couple of issues with this response. First, why wouldn't you want to give foreigners a chance to experience AUTHENTIC Korean BBQ? Second, how do you expect me to eat non-marinated meat with no sauce? It doesn't even have salt and pepper on it!

I voiced my second issue to the server to which he responded, "we have BBQ sauce, hot sauce, (insert forgotten third sauce here) that we can offer with AYCE". I was shocked at the options offered and didn't want any of them. I let the server go on with his business, and tried to think things over while the non-marinated meat was cooking. I just couldn't bare eating plain meat or with any of those sauces, that I had to ask the server for a favour to at least bring us sesame oil with salt. He responded that he can bring them secretly! WOW!

At this point, I should probably explain for those who don't know what Korean BBQ is supposed to be like: lettuce, mixed bean/chilli paste, sesame oil with salt, and stew are staples in Korean BBQ. Although in my personal opinion, the stew can be optional.

After all that, we started eating the meat and realized that their marinated meat didn't even taste very good. It seemed like it was marinated in soy sauce only.

Anyway, I normally don't do long reviews, but just had to share my awful experience. If you want authentic Korean BBQ and meats that are marinated better, do not visit here.

oh! BTW, I know it says 15% gratuity will be included in the bill for the AYCE menu. But when our bill came, it wasn't included. I double checked with the server, and he said no it wasn't included in our bill. This leads me to believe that they only include the 15% gratuity on bills for foreigners only....

This place is literally the only place you can eat Korean BBQ in Mississauga, and the food is crap!!! I tried the All You Can Eat, and the pork was disgusting! If you set the grill on low, it will never cook. If you set the grill even a little higher, it will burn. There is a time limit of 1hr 30 min, but it's written very small and it is almost invisible on the menu. I brought my mom, and she said that she is surprised that they even call their food meat. I will never ever come back to this place, even for free. And on top of that, it is expensive too. They marinated everything in the same sauce, so you got that same bland taste every time. The other reviews on this page are older, from years back, but this is recent. They must have changed the owner/cook or something, because now their food is complete crap. The only thing worth eating here is their Pork Bone Soup. Honestly, the best thing about this restaurant is the fountain at the door, which, of course, you cannot eat. There is also this new server who doesn't know when to stop pestering us. He keeps showing up and asking us, "Would you like some more meat, perhaps?" at least four times while we were struggling to cook burned and uncooked food. On top of that, we had to change our grill 3 times, because our food kept leaving sear and burn marks everywhere. And all the vents above the grills serve no purpose, as they don't work. We had to get the manager/owner to help us turn on the grill at least twice until I figured out how to do it myself. Apparently the grills don't have a pilot fire, which disables their ability to turn on instantly causing us to change seats twice. And for kids 10 and up, they still charge the adult price, which is 20 dollars. Nobody throws that kind of money around for this crappy food. This place is not even fancy or anything, so I see no reason to charge this much. My guess is that the reason why they have a time limit is to make money. This is because they know that their grills take forever to cook things, so they added a time limit too. I recommend that you spare your stomach for this torture and don't come here. If you really want Korean BBQ, Mississauga is not the place to be. Toronto has a lot of better...

We went in on Sunday for AYCE, immediately upon entering the waitress with the short hair greeted us and pointed to where we should sit and left and never seen at our table again. (the restaurant was NOT full) We sat down and waited 15 min before I actually had to walk up to the front to notify the waitress that we have yet to receive any tea, water anything. When the food finally came everything was ok for awhile for the most part they were very prompt bring out our food but the other waitress with the shoulder length hair messed up our order, but quickly got the right food and apologized. At the end when I wanted the bill once again no one was there, and I noticed an asian family came in way after us and the woman with the short hair served them quickly and they didn't have to wait for even a minute. I was so done with this place and once again I had to walk up to the front desk for service. You will understand soon why I keep bringing up the lack of service there soon. So I told her i'm done and would like my bill so she slips me the bill which is $67.78 with HST included which is normal because it was just me my wife, and our child who didn’t eat anything but then the waitress quickly grabs the machine and says there is an automatic 15% tip included which she just punches in without so much as batting an eye lash. At this point I’m just staring at her and completely caught off guard by the absolute greediness and lack of courtesy by her. I uploaded the pictures of the before the tip and after amount tip with the supposed 15 percent tax. I do not like how they instill that rule not only is it greedy and really technically wrong but it makes them look so bad especially since as I have stated the service for us was really below acceptable. With that being said I believe after taxes are added in by the restaurant anything after that is dependent entirely on the customer to pay whether that be 5%,10% or 15%. Very corrupt business practices and very unethical I believe. Most likely we won’t be returning to this place, the food was good but their customer service isn’t. Be wary of their mandatory 15% tip and consider going elsewhere where people will actually work to earn your tip and not...