YORI Piccadilly Circus Korean BBQ — Restaurant in London

I love the food at Yori and I've been many times. That being said, yesterday I had a frustrating experience and want to leave a record (turned into an essay lol) so that hopefully staff can better address similar situations in the future. Also this will hopefully warn others to avoid the problem I had.

TLDR: I came on my own and had no booking (nobody else did amongst 8 people in the queue) I was told to wait like the rest. I waited 30 minutes whilst starving. Everyone other than me was seated. When it came to my turn I was told there were no tables and abruptly asked to leave with no explanation. The whole time I could see 1 small empty table where I could have be seated.

The details: I arrived at the restaurant on my own without a reservation at 4:55pm, and started queuing behind ~8 other people. The place was busy. Within a couple of minutes the first few were seated (they had no reservation) and the rest of us queing were asked if we had a reservation (none of us did) and told to wait.

I waited a total of 30 minutes in queue, 25 of which the staff was aware of me having told me to wait. Everyone ahead of me was seated eventually.

During the whole time I was waiting I could see at least one small empty table where I could have been seated, but this was not offered to me. Possibly it was reserved, but nobody used it.

By the time I was first on the queue there were at least 10 other people behind me. Groups of different sizes, some with reservations, some without.

Finally when my turn came, I was abruptly told: "sorry, we have no tables" and asked to leave. This was awful after waiting for 30 minutes and after seeing many other people without a reservation being seated.

I can only imagine that they may not have wanted to offer me a table because I was on my own, and there were other people behind me so they may make more money by seating a group of two instead on my place.

Well, long term, that strategy may backfire. I've been to Yori at least 20 times before, and have brought my partner, family members and friends (perhaps 8 different people that I can recall) with me. So Yori has made decent business out of me over the last couple of years.

After this experience I am far less likely to return or to recommend the place. Short term seating 2 people instead of 1 may yield slightly more profit (better utilisation of space, although less than 2x revenue since 1 person typically orders, eats and leaves much faster than 2).

Treating a customer so poorly means that long-term the customer won't return or refer the restaurant. Although there are many variables at play and it's hard to estimate, an incident like this may cost a restaurant hundreds or even thousands of pounds of lost future revenue if the customer never returns and stops referring the place.

I'd venture a restaurant will lose a lot of potential revenue if treating people like this. Unless it relies mainly on one-off visits from tourists rather than regulars, which some in this central location do. Yori has many branches though, so it doesn't reflect well in the brand.

The place was very busy as mentioned earlier, so I am sure staff was a bit overwhelmed and a bit disorganised and that's why this regrettable incident happened. Not claiming this was some sort of personal attack.

All in all, great food, but don't do on your own, and don't go without reservation unless you are prepared to wait for 30 minutes and risk being told to...

We had a reservation for 8pm and didn't get seated until 8.20pm, it was Saturday so we were not too surprised however we were not informed that the table had a time limit for the BBQ so less than one hour later around 9.10ish pm they just brought us the check while we were still eating without asking us if we wanted anything else and literally just dropped the bill on the table and walked off.

This was already after a very bad service from the blond waitress with glasses. I asked before ordering, since she didn't ask for allergies which she must do by law and she didn't, if the kimchi was vegetarian as their online menu had the kimchi rice listed as vegetarian. she said she thought it was but wasn't sure. I told her to check as traditionally kimchi is made with anchovies sauce. she came back after checking with the kitchen and said that the item was vegetarian because it's made with fish and shellfish sauce but the actually meat of the fish is not inside. I looked at her to make sure she was being serious and told her that then the item is not vegetarian and she insisted that it wasn't vegan but vegetarian. clearly she didn't have a clue about allergies and dietary requirements nevermind what vegetarian means and the chef knew even less. also shellfish is one of the 14 allergens that must be declared by law it's absurd that it's contained in dishes and the waitress doesn't know she must ask before taking an order. then another waiter brought us the meat for the BBQ but not the oil to grease the bbq with.

appalling service, we will not be returning and I wanted to ask for the service charge to be taken off but the group in front of us did and and was subjected to a questioning as to why they didn't want to pay for it.

stay away, there are much better korean...

A nice little restaurant which serves korean bbq. We went there for dinner. The food was good, you don't get free rice and no sauces, which is strange. You have to buy steamed rice extra for 3.50 £. You also will not get lettuce with your meat, only if you buy it in a set which is not customizable (only either a lot of beef and a little bit of chicken and pork or only beef). So we had to buy a lettuce platter for extra money. They didn't read our remarks which you can add at the end of each order, so one friend of us couldn't use the grill because they brought his meat cooked (we ordered from two different phones to order faster, because we only got the table for 1.30 h which is a very short amount of time and kinda stressful if you need to order for a lot of people and also grill the meat). They also didn't read the "less spicy" note by my friend who can't handle anything spicy, so she couldn't really eat much of it. The meat wasn't seasoned, which isn't that uncommon, but without sauces I wouldn't recommend the pork belly. I don't know if we've overseen the sauce section of the menu but we couldn't order them. We also ordered cabbage kimchi and it never arrived, they still charged it though at the end. It was only about 3 £ so no worries, the restaurant was really packed and mistakes happen. I also didn't got a glass for my coke. I think if we asked they would have brought us the missing stuff, but we didn't want to cause any trouble. Otherwise the servers were really nice, sweet and helpful and always very courteous! And also very fast after you've ordered.

The place is not wheelchair accessible. The toilets were clean and the rice cakes, ramen and beef bulgogi were lovely.

Overall a nice place for a quick lunch I would say, if a...