Dakgogi — Restaurant in Ottawa

I WAITED OUTSIDE FOR 40 MINUTES!

I went to Dakgogi because it's my sister's favorite chicken restaurant and we wanted to surprise her for her birthday. I got there at 11:20 a.m. since their business hours said 11:30 a.m. There was one lady also waiting outside, so I thought she was a customer waiting for them to open. 11:30 a.m. passed, but the restaurant still didn't open. I thought, "It's okay, maybe they are just preparing." At 11:35 a.m., there was no sign of people preparing or even opening the door. At 11:45 a.m., there was still no sign, but I patiently waited. I tried to call their phone number, but there was no answer. At 11:50 a.m., a car arrived in front of the store; I didn't know if it was the cook or the manager. He went straight into the store, and they opened at 11:55 a.m.

The plot twist was that the lady I saw waiting outside was a staff member; she didn't even tell me she worked there. I went inside like nothing happened, and they didn't apologize for opening so late. There were no greetings or anything. It got worse when they told me to wait for another 15 minutes. So I patiently waited again.

What really angered me was when two customers came in and the lady greeted them, offered them a place to sit, and even offered them water. Meanwhile, I had waited outside for 40 minutes with no greetings, no apology, and they didn't even offer me water. It was ZERO CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!

​If it wasn't my sister's favorite place, I wouldn't have bothered waiting.

​Just a piece of advice: If you can't follow your opening hours, just change them. If you see a disappointed customer who waited for 30 minutes outside, try to offer them some sort of compensation or take accountability for your mistake. Either apologize for being late or just say thank you for...

My mother and I tried this place on its very first day. The staff were mostly enthousiastic, calm & helpful and the music was just at the right volume but coming from the corner so we moved away from the source. This is not a place to cook your own Japanese BBQ but a restaurent of yakitori skewers. Delicious! They even had a free house sauce which enhanced each dish. I started with "miso soup with clams" which didn't have any detectable clams but had fresh seaweed, soft tofu and a gentle miso umami. We also ordered edamame, which came warm with salt. My mother enjoyed the green salad but didn't get the sauce on the side as requested. We also ordered chicken skin (so good especially with salt), ribeye beef, short ribs, octopus, jumbo shrimp, corns, mushrooms (so good we ordered another right away!), eggplant, beef tongue and okra. Unfortunately the last two were unavailable, and the eggplant never came but they did remove it from our bill. Each skewer order came with two. The decor was on theme and they had placed various Buddhas in some alcoves along the wall. I will note that despite it being their first day open, the bathrooms were not very clean. Will also note that the menus aren't consistent (one had okra another did not - one had octopus another had squid) as one had more details but both contained cartoon versions of the food and were visually accessible which I really appreciated personally. Our server was readily accepting feedback, very nice and attentive to us the entire time. Super cute place, a nice date night idea (although we also saw families exploring), and we both really enjoyed our meal. I would love to come again to try the rest...

I wish I could give separate reviews for the food vs. the dine-in experience. The chicken is amazing and delicious - we got the green onion and the soy ginger. Both were great. However, the dine- in experience was disappointing and bizarrely bad. For one thing, probably 80% of their side/starter options were unavailable, and they had only 5 bottles of beer total (I think 3 varieties overall) - all domestic, no imported beer! Pretty strange for a place that specialized in Korean chicken & beer. This was on a Saturday but it wasn’t busy in the restaurant at all. The cleanliness was disappointing- tables were sticky, the bathrooms smelled and had visible dirt/mold. It seemed like they hadn’t been cleaned in months. There was a mop bucket and cleaning supplies blocking the hallway as well as a number of cases of pop. The server was nice but it was confusing to see the servers standing around doing nothing while parts of the restaurant were clearly filthy - seemed like they could be wiping tables. The jug for water also had a dirty residue around the pouring spout and did not look like it had been cleaned in ages. So overall, the food is still great and maybe for take- out it would be worth the price. But we were very disappointed in the dine-in experience especially compared to The Fry. The standards for dine-in are no longer the same as they used to be at this place. I wouldn’t go back for dine-in unless there was a clear change in what...