isaytakoyummy — Restaurant in Winnipeg

Edit: after a few more days I decided to check their Instagram out of curiosity. They seemed out my socials and blocked me. I was going to stay quiet on there and just tell people word of mouth if they asked about it there, but I guess I’m being obnoxious about it now. Way to go. Not only did you not respond to people like you normally do on here, you chose blocking. Guess you can’t come back at me with “you must get off on leaving negative reviews” like you did say to my fiancé because my reviews are quite fair. Learn from your many shortcomings and do better.

Went here on my birthday and at the time right after the experience I was just happy to have tried something new even though everything was mid at best. The more I have time to think about it, and the more I see has definitely changed my opinion. I had seen friends post on Instagram about going here for Korean BBQ and had always been curious. I figure people were all over this place since it was so exclusive with only allowing people to dine there with a reservation only. (I see they’re changing this now based on recent posts)

I not only felt disappointed by the experience, but gaslit by the waitress who was doing double duty as hostess. I tried to empathize because it seemed like she was running the ship by herself. I was confused by her instruction and then she proceeded to fight with us giving us the food ordered by a different table. She acted stubbornly infallible as if she could not make a mistake, saying “but this is for your table.” The menus were mislabelled or switched. That didn’t seem like a possibility to her. My fiancé has a mushroom allergy and it was being insisted that this massive volume of food including mushrooms was our table’s until the other table who it belonged to piped in and confirmed it was theirs. She scoffed and switched it afterwards with no acknowledgement of the mistake. If we had started to cook it, it would have been an even bigger problem. Accept the mistake, correct it and apologize and move on and it would have been better.

How do I describe the atmosphere? Inoffensive, but doing the bare minimum. While there is nothing wrong with having things from IKEA or Dollarama for the things like utensil holders, it all does the trick just fine. But most restaurants at least try to make something unique to their name. The fact that the music that was playing was just covers of popular music didn’t do it any favours of it feeling cheap. I’m anticipating a response from them twisting my response around like they did with my fiancé already. If you want to survive as a local business, know that the cheap decor is the least of your problems. In comparison, it really wasn’t a problem at all, but it’s a parameter Google asks about.

We were the second set of people that were there to dine and were shortly followed by 2 or 3 other tables. Two of those tables, including the people’s order we got were finished before us. It was an increasingly frustrating time pressing the call button only for the waitress to address every other table but ours. It also felt incredibly dangerous that I was trying to avoid being tangled by the cord of the stove underneath my seat by the wall. The exhaust fan was grimy, and the bathroom filthy. The trip there was meant to be a good time to celebrate my birthday and relax after a stressful day, and it was expensive and disappointing, contributing to more stress.

I should have read these other reviews to warn me because there are some recurring issues that are still happening to patrons. This was days ago and I was going to pretty much just accept that it was “okay” and move on, but I’m still upset about it and it has ruined any sort of birthday celebration. This is mostly due to with the way I’ve seen the owners respond with the same “I’m sorry this didn’t meet your standards”-not actually sorry response. I don’t have a lot of para-social influence and I’m not here to destroy a place with my review, but I will be truthful with friends and family to just do this at home or go to the other place we...

This review is solely for the new korean bbq portion of the restaurant. I've ordered take out before for their takoyaki (before the space was renovated) and those are really good.

I think the price is pretty reasonable costing about $30 for all you can eat meat + seafood and a few dollars less if you just want meat. IGI is more expensive but they have more options. So this place is more like if you dont want to spend too much but still want to enjoy cooking meats.

Some meats were more flavourful/marinated well compared to others. Overall, still enjoyed it. Also had popcorn chicken which was good!

The reason why this is not a 5 star is because of the time limit and heat levels of the grill. The servers were very nice, attentive and answered many of the questions I had. However, right from when I was seated (I was not late for my time slot) I was reminded that my time was starting now. I told the server if I could wait for my friend to arrive in about 1-2 mins before they started to explain how the menu works. I was told that my time was starting already so I essentially felt that its best that I start now and explain to my friend later.

There is a strict 2 hour limit. Within the 1.5 hours everything was going fine. In the last half hour I was asked about 4x if I wanted my receipt to pay. I was mindful of my time so I knew exactly when I needed to be out of there. The first 2x I was asked to pay I mentioned that I was still eating / finishing up and if they could come back abit later. When I was asked another 2x I was abit weirded out because I still had 15 mins to go. So im not sure why the rush?

This is my suggestion about the time limit. I understand why time limits exist for these types of restaurants. However, I noticed they do not have a time gap between each time slot to clean up etc. My reservations were from 6-8 and next time slot started at 8. I think that could be the reason why the servers are feeling the need to get you out of there asap. I suggest about a 15 min buffer between time slots.

The heat levels I wasnt told that I could change myself until an hour after. In the beginning the server set it up and it was way too high. I was seeing sparks and flames rising continuously as I was cooking and Im not sure if that is normal I could be wrong. When I asked to lower the heat it was lowered to the point where none of the meats were cooking. The servers were kind enough to change my heat levels 3x until they finally told me I could do it myself.

Overall I can see myself returning but will wait until they improve the time limit. Would love to see this...

So it's possible that they could have gotten two instead, but that wouldn't be fair given that there are numerous five star reviews from the same people which artificially inflate their rating. Based on this, the current rating is not reflective of what restaurant-goers actually think of the restaurant. They can try denying this, but the reviewer names are literally identical and there were 3 of them posted within minutes of each other. There were also other questionable reviews that are a bit older.

The food was pretty mediocre in terms of taste and presentation. You'll literally get a stack of meat piled on top of each other and it takes a while for the stuff to come out. The variety also wasn't stellar... I think there are more slightly meat options than IGI here, but IGI includes so many other things as part of their AYCE that the variety here just really pales in comparison. I will also mention that there was a fruit fly stuck on one of my leaves of lettuce, so whether everything is washed properly is a little questionable.

For me, side dishes are such an important part of kbbq, but the amount they give you is so small and the variety just isn't quite there (you get gochujang cucumbers, kimchi, and what I think were gochujang beansprouts). I know you can ask for refills on sides, but our waitresses kept forgetting so we never got any. I won't talk much about the straight gochujang as a dipping sauce, but it's just a lot of gochujang all around.

Aside from that, as many have pointed out, the time limit of 1.5 hours is simply unfair, especially considering that it takes time for the food to be brought over and cooked. They have recommended cooking times which generally say 2 minutes per side, but it's for a heat level of P6, and the highest they let you go is P4, so you actually can't cook a lot of food within the time limit they give. I also think if they did orders by servings instead of by piece they could prep things and get orders out much quicker. The time limit of 1.5 hours made the evening feel very rushed and it simply wasn't possible to enjoy the food while cooking.

Overall, the food wasn't terrible or inedible or anything... It just really wasn't good though. The fruit fly also made things questionable for me. I think what ruined the experience the most was the time limit which made everything feel rushed. For what it's worth, the pricing actually isn't bad for AYCE, but after this experience, I would rather spend my...