Tanba Japanese BBQ 炭马烧肉专门店(Twin Galaxy) — Restaurant in Johor

Came here on a quiet Tuesday evening at 6pm expecting a decent BBQ experience. Unfortunately, it was more underwhelming than I expected—especially for the RM230 price tag (service charge included).

Let’s break it down: • You order food via an iPad mini on the table. That’s convenient. No need to walk to a fridge or buffet to grab your own raw meat—points for that. • The servers only help to set up the BBQ pit with charcoal and pass food. Once they pass you the raw meat, it’s entirely DIY—even when I asked if they could help place or flip the meat, they flatly refused. • Meanwhile, I saw multiple waiters and waitresses just chit-chatting or idling around. When they delivered food, they kept placing it on the far end of the grill—directly opposite the fire, which made it hard to reach across the hot zone.

As a solo single eater, I had a minor grease fire from thick bacon slices—pretty common in BBQ—but had to wave and disrupt two chatting staff just to get help. Honestly, they should have been more alert.

One waiter stood blankly in front of me while I waved and called for help—ignored me for over 10 seconds until another (older) waiter came over. Poor training is clear.

Other annoyances: • Want to use sauce? Extra RM6. • Only free drinks are water and Genmaicha tea. Everything else is RM7+. • Food is… okay. Plenty of options, but many of the “premium” items (like wagyu and chocolate) are chargeable on top of the RM230. • Overall taste is mediocre. For the price, I’ve had better food and service at cheaper BBQ places.

What they did get right: • Very comfortable seating with soft pillows. • Huge screen in the center—nice touch. • BBQ pit’s smoke filtration system is excellent, barely any smoke on me or my clothes.

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Final Thoughts:

Worth a try if you’re curious, but I don’t recommend it. You’re basically paying premium prices for mediocre food and subpar service, especially on a...

Value for money food. Service staff can definitely benefit from training

Food wise, nothing to complain about. For RM100 all you can eat, the food quality was good. Especially liked the stir fried stuff such as the Inoki mushroom with garlic. Meats were decent as well.

Staff-wise, the only description is that they were not well trained and uncoordinated.

We arrived early so there were plenty of seats. We waited 10 minutes for the iPad menu only to be told they were having technical issues with that particular table’s ipad. Only when I asked to move to. Table with a working ipad did they actually do it

Staff frequently left out orders, we had to remind them about a few orders before they would serve them

The burning charcoal was stacked too high that it protruded out of the grill so that if you put food on it, it would contact with the charcoal. Had to use the reverse side of the tongs to push it down

Lots of smoke was coming out of the grill and my wife had to shift place a few times. It was only after we started eating the fist few dishes did another staff bring over a circular ring that was placed over the grill to trap the smoke

Even asking for the bill took a Long time. We had to ask 2 different staff, both of whom asked me where the ipad was (it was already taken by another staff earlier)

Totally uncoordinated such that despite having a lot of staff, the service was not great. Can improve further on...

We went for the hot pot instead of the barbecue, which was confusing, because when I searched for Chigui Hotpot, it doesn't show on Google maps. It was only when I reached the venue, that I realized Tanba and Chigui was connected, nonetheless, the interior was awesome.

In terms of food, the meat was great. Go for the prawn paste if you are going for their hotpot. The prawn paste is served to the table as a bowl of raw paste, which you will then cook by the spoonfuls in the hotpot. It was really quite an experience.

The ambiance was great, and I was puzzled because the whole place doesn't smell like a hotpot restaurant (usually these places are hot, and filled with smokes), I guess the high ceiling and good ventilation helps. The hotpots were cooked in the traditional way, using charcoals. So you might want to be careful when the workers are changing the charcoals. Trust me, you don't want those hot charcoals to fall on you.

They have a great selection of sauce to go with your hotpot, but do mind that they charge RM3 per pax for the sauce (if you want to help your self to their awesome selection).

All and all, it was a great experience, I was there to celebrate a friend's birthday, and our table is around 8 pax. We got 4 types of soup filled in 2 pots (yinyang pots fill 2 types of soups each). The total damage was about...