Sakura BBQ Coréen — Restaurant in Quebec

A black hole is a star right? Too bad we can't give them as ratings. If there was a way to give negative stars this place deserves it. Really the only thing going for them is the decor. We arrived early for an 8 o'clock reservation. What we didn't know was they have assigned times and kick people to the curb when meal time is over. So we arrived at the tail end of the 1800-2000hrs service. There is no waiting area other than the vestibule where there was about 25-30 persons crammed as it was cold outside and staff told the people holding the doors open to shut them so as not to let the heat out. 2000hra arrives and by 2015 we have seats for 6. We ordered through the QR code link and got our entré's 45 min later....we most of them. One of our servers lost his tickets and became lost with his orders. We had to ask for utensils multiple times and finally when we got the original servers attention, he came over and said "oh I forgot utensils didn't I?" Yes, sadly, yes you did. Now understand the concept of this place is pretty cool. You sit around a table that's équipes with a griddle in the middle and plates of meat are brought to you and you do up your own meat. But half way through our meal our griddle stops working. When brought to our servers attention the response we got was "oh that happens in the previous sitting as well" .... ? ..... I mean.....did you have some one have a look at it before you sat more clients at a m table with broken equipment? Fine they had us change tables. And we carried on. Without utensils or beverages as the new table didn't have any glasses so water and drinks couldn't be poured. And eating food and even placing meat on the griddle with your hands is fine but the taking it off the 500° griddle without utensils is pretty sketchy. Also, if you're going to run specific times for sittings then run things like the theatres do. Give staff 20-30 minutes to clean up and reset the tables properly and not rush things-which is how I'm guessing tables were only partially set.

I usually try/do things 2x just to make sure I didn't like it the 1st time. This place warrants no revisit and certainly no recommendations. Especially for the...

I had the worst food poisoning of my life after dining here on Sunday night Aug 31st. The night began with a 8pm reservation time that was met with a gigantic line going out the door of the restaurant. Patrons were forced to wait at least 30 minutes for their own reservation. The wait staff greeted us by saying how stressed they were and how the previous service was difficult. Not something I’d particularly like to hear as a willing patron. There was a very clear lack of organization here. The quality of food was absolutely horrendous and there was a serious lack of sanitary standard with various staff handling food (cooked and raw) with bare hands and seemingly touching raw ingredients with thumbs in dishes.. gross. Every dish that we ordered was legitimately terrible, from the overfried rock hard calamari to the coal like popcorn chicken, slimy radishes, and raw meats that were not even sliced properly but rather a bundle of stringy fatty under prepared cuts of meat. Hours after eating here I vomited practically everything as it really wasnt settling in my stomach. I then developed a fever and severe body aches that lasted the next 24 hours. I live in Toronto so the next day my poor wife had to do a full 8 hr drive all on her own because I was unconscious for majority of the trip. Luckily she didn’t eat any of the sushi which I suspect is the culprit to the food poisoning. The worst part was the price, as my total bill was $130 including a mandatory 15% gratuity. Terrible by any standards. I genuinely believe they are able to get away with this because there’s no quality competition in Quebec City to know what the KBBQ experience is supposed to be like.

Update: I gave the restaurant a call on Sep 2nd who was unwilling to accept any accountability whatsoever and insinuated that I likely got food poisoning else where or perhaps ate too much. They claim that hundreds of patrons ate there last week and they hadn’t received any feedback meaning they must’ve done no wrong. Extremely shameful to not even empathize with a patron who shelled out $130 or even offer an apology for the subpar experience that we went through.

DO...

This is my first review, and I usually don’t feel necessary to leave one. However, I did not leave this place with a good experience (at all). First off, did NOT even taste like Korean BBQ. The meat looked very low quality and portions were small. Two pieces were given per order. Meat didn’t even taste good to make up for it. They did not once change the grill even thought it was already burnt (usually they do it for you in other Korean BBQ places but we did not ask because we were on our last 5 PIECE pork belly order). No sauces for the meat like soy bean paste or even salt—only soy sauce for the sushi. The kimchi did not taste anything remotely similar to Korean kimchi: it tasted like pickles. They also only give you like 5 tiny pieces per order of kimchi, and we still couldn’t finish it. The ramen tasted worse than the instant ramen I make at home. The noodles were not or at least did not taste like actual ramen noodles; the soup was also very bland. We paid over $125 for two people including tip and only got two $2 mango juices extra. For a $120 meal, it was not worth it at all. Staff was nice though. Rating should be way lower than a 3.9. If you want authentic Korean bbq with decent quality in meat DON’T come here no matter how desperate you are. Totally not worth...