Kalbi BBQ — Restaurant in Montreal

If you want enjoy salt and pepper with meat being the condiment, this is the restaurant for you. If you feel like you need to achieve high blood pressure or heart disease, this is the place for you. I will say that this is the worst restaurant that I have been to in recent memory We walked in without reservations on a Friday evening. They had a dj and it was clean with a lounge vibe. The hostess greeted us with a nice smile and showed us to our booth. It started off promising. They had a QR code ordering service and had a robot delivery system - gimmicky but I understand that restaurants are trying to cut costs. Our server turned on our grill and said that we should use the wax paper on the grill to grill as it would be more hygienic. - Right there was a red flag that should have said "Leave". No respectable bbq - All You Can Eat or A La Carte would have you grill on wax paper. This was a cost saving measure so that they would not have to change the grill out at all. But we were hungry and we had sat down so we ordered.

I know that AYCE sushi places add more rice. I get it. It has to do with the balance of profit vs taste. I have been to many before. There is usually an acceptable amount of what is considered "More". Kalbi went beyond that unwritten understanding of rice to fish ratio at an AYCE restaurant that exists. See picture below. If you eat six pieces it is equivalent to a bowl of rice. Next we started to cook our first order - short ribs - on paper they asked us to grill on. We put them on the grill and after cooking took our first bite. It was like we did a shot of salt with a beef condiment with an aftertaste of pepper. For those who drink, think this - a tequila shot but just different. Imagine doing a shot of salt after licking a little bit of tequila from between the thumb and index finger, then finishing it off by sucking on a cube of salt and pepper. This is what it was like.

We begrudgingly managed to eat the 6 pieces while drinking nearly a pitcher of water. I asked the server if there was a way to get the next order with less or 0 salt. The server said no. So we ordered again hoping maybe it was just a bad batch. It was just as salty and inedible. I would have taken pictures and posted the meat however as I stated I never take pictures or really leave an reviews. Also it is difficult to take a picture of beef surrounding salt because it still looks like beef. After finishing nearly another pitcher of water with the second serving, we decided to go with more sushi as we did not want to order any more bbq dishes because we were literally terrified of having to eat something so inedible and unpalatable. The sushi came with just as much rice as the picture and we ate 6 pieces, and asked for the check.

The person who brought us our check asked how our meal was and I told her it was horrible. That it was too salty and I don't understand how anyone can sit here and eat this. She said that there had been a lot of complaints about the salt and pepper today and she would once again inform the kitchen. It probably explains the other unhappy faces like ours that were around us.

However her answer really tells you a lot about the owner and the management. If there was a problem with the marinade and other people were complaining, they should have rectified it. They didn't because they valued profit over customer health and satisfaction. Says everything about the owners and managers.

Now one can argue that there are quite a few good reviews. Yes, there are. Maybe the chef changed. Maybe it was marinated by a disgruntled employee before they quit? Who knows why it was so bad that evening.

But I can only give my review based on my food experience that night and it was horrendous. It really was the worst tasting food I have had in recent memory. Just for comparison, I average 100 restaurants a year because I travel for work so much. My original review was much longer but words were capped. Enjoy at...

EDIT: the owner says things have changed since my review was first posted 2 years ago. Will try again and update accordingly.

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Plain food and bad service, Kalbi BBQ is the opposite of a good night.

We RSVP'd the private room (as stated on their site), and it quickly turned public as the workers asked if they can use one of the tables for another group of 10. We only needed 3 tables in the end so we allowed it, but it's still awkward to be sharing the private room with people.

Our dinner started at 6pm, we noticed the tables were sticky and some of the utensils were dirty (we saw first hand the workers don't inspect these between tables... gross!). This is when we were introduced to the robot server Steven whose novelty wore off after he frequently delivered to wrong table and bumped into chairs (there was always a human server escorting him anyways.. why have a robot ?).

The food was okay, some meats were bland but others were decent. Sushi was pretty good. They had a big selection of entrees, meats, veggies and sushi so that's a plus. Drinks were average price. They made a mistake on some of our food, but took it back with no questions.

This is where the bad service really kicked in: just a little over a hour into dinner we already received a last call to order food (again we had a 2 hour RSVP). My table had only ordered 2 rounds at this point, so we loaded up on as much food as we thought we'd be able to eat but this was risky because you get charged $1 for each leftover piece. The robot Steven brought our food (to the middle of the room) and we began to cook and eat until the server returned 15 minutes before our rsvp ended to have us pay our bill. I imagine they need this time to clean up, so instead of adding a buffer between reservations they choose to get rid of you early.

The thing with the bill is that you cannot split the bill on the weekend ! While we misunderstood this, it's really poor practice from the business to force a single bill per table especially when the bills are close to a $1000. Individual people will order their own drinks or priced food, and instead of the business automatically splitting the bills in their system, they charge you one time and make it so you, the client, figure out the split on your own (came up to $58 per person with tip, no drinks) . The server responded smugly and with lies when we asked her about this. On top of this, the server forced a mandatory 18% tip, despite it being 15% on their policy. How sneaky.

The reason we chose Kalbi was because they offered a free meal for birthdays (as indicated on their website), but the birthday girl still had to pay and was only reluctantly refunded after persisting with the manager.

Overall, this restaurant left a bad taste, both by the food and by the service and we won't be returning. Chinatown is unfortunately losing a lot of businesses, but with poor management in restaurants like Kalbi BBQ it isn't surprising. Based off the owner's responses, it's clear they are in need of a change. The staff was overall friendly, but the service suffers because of the poor policies they have to enforce.

There's a lot of better KBBQ spots to enjoy such as Sota, Hoshi, Kimbo, Seoul Chako and Daldongnae. There's even Chez Bong next door. The point is unless you're just 2 or maybe 3 people, stay clear!

ALSO THE OWNER KEEPS BLOCKING MY...

ALL YOU CAN EAT This is quantity over quality. Wish we had known it was an all you can eat before we went there – in the reviews all we saw was hibachi. It was upstairs, hot, Saturday evening, we did not have reservations and we were hungry. After we were seated, the waiter immediately explained that it was an all you can eat with a maximum 2 hours and fee for unfinished food. Food is ordered via your cell phone – scan a QR code to arrive at the ordering system. Everything is in 0.5-1 person portions so if ordering edamame for 4 people order 2-4 portions. The sushi rolls come with a lot of mayo sauce covering it which we scraped off. The hibachi shrimp comes with the shell on – good for taste but horrible to peel and eat. Aside from the limited sushi (no tuna, no yellowtail, no whitefish – pretty much just salmon and shrimp, crab stick, omelet, tofu), a bunch of rolls including some monstrosity called sushi pizza, and limited hibachi items, the deep fried foods were abundant: mushroom tempura, fried onion rings, imperial rolls (aka egg rolls), broccoli tempura, sweet potato tempura, fried calamari, fried scallops, frites, fried dumplings – and yes, I can feel my arteries clogging as we speak. Almost all the desserts were sold out. To give Kalbi credit, it had moments like a cute little robot server (although we had a few dishes go missing) and the wait staff were very attentive. Overall the quality was pretty poor and meant for folks who just want to fill up on anything. Next to us a pair of couples sat down and it was literally gross to watch them over-order and eat multiple platters of deep fried food. After undereating, I kept staring at the online menu hoping something tasty would appear – when that didn’t happen I decided that I would try to eat my weight in pineapple slices but the tanginess of pineapple made my tastebuds literally quit on me about 6 servings in (or about ½ a pineapple). And they did keep bringing me dishes of pineapple with no judgement. You won’t get sick but you will definitely have indigestion. The only way we would return is if we were entertaining heavyweight eaters that literally didn’t care what they were stuffing...