Zabu Chicken — Restaurant in Vancouver

Zabu Zabu Zabu.

Came here with work friends on a Monday night at 5:15pm. Place got packed fast. Not judging here but a lot of demographic eating here were mostly Asian. Just telling people who are reading this review to give you an idea.

Again, my standards for Korean food are high so take my review for what it is worth.

I honestly came here based on a recommendation from a co worker. I think the hype and build up to come here was too much/high.

Our group of 5 ordered the following: 1 full order of the soy sauce chicken, 1 full order of the Yangnyeom, 1 order of the regular chicken, 1 ordered of the seafood pancake, 1 order of the chap Jae, two bottles of yogurt soju, 3 pitchers of beer 🍻 (Sapporo). Total bill was $227 (tips included into this price). Works out to $38 per person.

Anyways, out of what we ordered, the soy sauce chicken is the best 👌. It was very tasty and I have never had this variation of fried chicken before. I give this chicken flavour/type 5 stars.

As for the other dishes, they were just very "average". It was the consensus at the dinner table as well.

Yangnyeom chicken was a bit funny tasting and the sauce seemed to be a bit tampered with in terms of its taste. If you have ever been to an authentic korean fried chicken place, you will know what i mean. Almost had left overs of this dish.

Original fried chicken was alright. VERY crispy but there is not a whole lot of taste. I found it a bit dried out.

Seafood pancake was horrible. Soggy and it SHOULD be crispy. Tells me that got amateur cooks.

The chap Jae was also disgusting 🤢. Very poorly made. It was pan fried and you can tell it was made without any care in the world.

Yogurt soju. It was tasty. I have no proof of this but I could taste NO soju at all. This gets me thinking, the ratio of ACTUAL soju to yogurt on these "open bottles" that were provided to us were modified or tampered with by the kitchen. Don't think there was a lot of soju inside. For those who don't know soju. Soju is very potent at 20% alcohol. I checked the bottle and it was the original. 20% is high for soju as most range anywhere from 13-18%. The fact the soju bottles came pre opened, tells me there was some playing around with the ratios. 1/5 stars on the yogurt soju. Tasty but don't think there was much soju in it. For $16-18 per bottle, it is a rip off.

Save your cash and try some other korean...

i was planning to throw then 1 star for my terrible experience but gave 2 eventually as their food is still okay. we went there on a Sat night in a group of 8 ppl. was okay until the waitress came to take our orders. i sat at the corner of this long table we were seated at, the waitress was standing diagonally to me around the other corner of the table. The music was pretty loud, i couldnt hear what she said, neither could she hear me. but instead of walking over here and asking for my orders, she just stood there, gave me a look and asked me to speak up when her lazy ass stayed still. the nightmare started right then. we got our food and it was okay. but the waitress kept coming to ask us if she could take away the bowls and plates when we were clearly still eating the food inside them! one waitress literally said "we have a lot of ppl in the line, can i clean this up and get you the bill?", that was only 30 min after we got our food.. after their terrible service and horrible attitude pissed all us off. we got the check to split the bill which took around 5 min, the waitress was looking at us at the cashier with a frastruated face and mumbling something in korean to another waitress. the bill, of course, expected from any resturant with terrible service, forced a 10% tip. never goingback to this place. from some older posts, looks like the owner checks posts sometimes, i just want the owner to know, if you are gonna force a tip, make your service be worth well the tip. dont force anything when your service right now is not worth a dime! the last thing you want is to let you customers tell you how to run...

We have come to Zabu Chicken many times before and it was always great. After being away from Vancouver for the summer, I came back and was shocked by the changes. The decorations are nice, but the staff and food quality have gone downhill completely.

This was honestly the worst customer service I have ever experienced. I also work in the restaurant industry, and we would never treat guests like this. Our server was in training, and even though we confirmed our order with her three times, she still forgot it. When we asked the manager about it, she only said “sorry, she is in training.” That’s not an excuse.

We had ordered long before last call, yet when we asked about our food, we were told it was already five minutes past last call and they wouldn’t serve us. On top of that, when we tried to order drinks, the server first told us we could take them to go because the restaurant was closing soon, but then came back and said we couldn’t order anymore. In the end, we missed both our food and our drinks.

We had brought our friends for their first time, and sadly it will also be their last. The whole experience was ruined. The manager (Ling, I believe) did not seem to know how proper customer service works. This was by far the worst dinner experience I’ve ever had, and we will not be returning. Never go to this...