AKA BBQ Station — Restaurant in Reading

Fantastic new addition to Reading town centre: £30/33 per adult for unlimited Korean BBQ!

From the entrance there are various gimbap, which is like Korean maki sushi rolls but with cooked veg, chicken, or beef. They were okay, with a slight taste of sesame oil. The spicy tteokbokki rice cakes were actually surprisingly good, they look like there was too much sauce but the rice cakes were actually quite bouncy with some bite to it, not overcooked or bloated at all.

In the heated trays they have Korean fried chicken wings 2 ways (sweet and spicy, and honey and garlic). Both were pretty good, Korean food often is sweet which is easy to like. They have a pasta dish which was frankly bizarre and off-theme, don't know what that's doing there outside of trying to carb you up. They also have japchae which is a Korean glass noodle dish which was pretty tasty, although with all of the hot food I feel like they should be a bit warmer than their current tepid temperature.

On the other side there were stir fried egg noodles, decent but I couldn't spot any of the pork that was supposedly in it. There were 2 more fried chicken dishes - sweet and spicy (not sour again as the sign suggests), and sweet and sour. Both were battered cubes of chicken breast so can get a bit dry, but an alternative to the wings above for those who prefer their chicken boneless. Above there were some chips, and some spring rolls which were a bit too doughy imo.

Next to these were some egg fried rice and some plain rice, and 2 soups that were both surprisingly decent. There was a beef soup that tasted like an umami-rich galbitang, even had some pieces of beef in it! The second was a kimchi soup that was a bit thin for a kimchi jjigae, I couldn't spot any pork belly or tofu.

Okay, enough of the hot food, onto the unlimited KBBQ meat! There were 6 different cuts of meat. Our favourite has always been the LA galbi, and it's the case here too: fatty cuts of beef short rib on the bone, marinated in a delicious sweet soy sauce. This is the one we always go back for more rounds of. There's beef bulgogi: thinner slices of beef flank, also marinated in sweet soy. There's barbeque chicken: whole pieces of skinless and boneless Halal chicken thighs, also marinated in sweet soy. There's pork neck: I think what Asians call thick slices of pork shoulder steaks, also marinated in sweet soy. There's pork bulgogi: thin slices of pork belly, also marinated in sweet soy. And lastly samgyeopsal: skinless pork belly not marinated, like unsalted bacon. These are often eaten at the start of the meal to grease up the BBQ, dipped just in some sesame oil and salt. All of them were great, well marinated and tender, but as you can tell from my description, the fact that 5 out of 6 cuts were all marinated in sweet soy is a little repetitive, at other KBBQs they often have at least some meats that are marinated in a red sweet and spicy gochujang (chilli soybean sauce).

The overall vibe for the place was pretty casual, very quiet so far as it's brand new but clean and newly decorated. They have a TV screen in the back playing K-pop music videos, but strangely that's not the music audio they're playing, which they should definitely sync up.

Overall I had a great time at AKA BBQ Station, and it's a fantastic addition to Reading town centre for people who wants to eat lots of Korean BBQ. I left feeling very full and satisfied. At £30/33 it's not cheap, if you're eating a lot then Soju or Gooi Nara would cost at least that at similar quality, and that's also around the same price as K-Town BBQ buffet in New Malden. The manager did say that they're planning to start a lunchtime deal very soon, so maybe wait for that if you're more patient than me. I really hope they do well, as I'm sure I'll be back again at some point the next time I'm craving lots and lots of Korean BBQ! If you liked the look of this, give them a visit and hope enjoy it as much as I did!...

Went to the new Korean buffet in town center for dinner and not so great experience. If you're a vegetarian then this place is absolutely no, you won't have any option apart from small salad counter which had 5 salads, 1 fruit and 2 dessert options. I found the Cucumber and cabbage Kimchi nice but I am sure everyone had better than these if you have tried this before. I liked the gimbab but on the second round when I went to take the chicken gimbab it was placed with beef, so people who can't have beef gimbab, can't eat the chicken one as well. There was prawn gimbap as well.Soups... Very basic, they didn't try hard regarding this. The mains were around 10 items, Korean glass noodles I guess, fried rice, noodles, fish cake, tteok-bokki,fried sweet potato which was under cooked, 2 different chicken wings items, 2 other chicken items, every chicken tasted like sweet and sour chicken almost. The grill meat section had 2/3 chicken, 1 squid, 2/3 beef, 2/3 pork. The meat tasted nice but nothing you can say great and everything was dipped in soy sauce marination. Even if I was not full but nothing in the buffet menu called out for second round. The chocolate fudge was okay but the cinnamon roll was so bad.

The service was nice but want to mention the guy in suit, I think he was trying to be nice but whenever someone goes to take food in the counter he keeps staring which felt a bit awkward.

If this buffet costed me within £15 it would have made sense but I didn't find any single reason for this to be £29.90 person comparing to food items , taste and the competition they have here. The part I liked is that they charge £10 pp for food waste, this initiative is great to control food waste. Reading town centre has other buffet place both veg and non-veg and they are doing way better than this place in terms of taste of food and buffet options.

I wouldn't visit this...

I'm writing this while it's fresh in my mind, the food definitely was not. The food selection was very limited, we had tried at least one of everything in the space of 30 minutes and did not go back for more. The meats for the KBBQ were very tasteless, I don't know how you get so little flavour out of a marinade, it's not difficult. The prepared dishes fared no better, the only dish which tasted of anything were the chicken wings and that flavour was pure desiccated coconut. Can't say there were really any vegetarian or vegan dishes outside of rice with some veg in it. All of this food must have been left out for a while with how stale it all felt (the rice on the Gimbap especially). A side note; never asked about allergies and if the cards labeling the dishes had them, they were not obvious. I want to make it very clear, this is not remotely authentic Korean food. This was actually pretty bad food. I think the only nice thing I had to eat was the brownie and cinnamon roll that I know is courtesy of Costco. Separate to the dire food, the restaurant was empty (literally us two and a family of three) and yet we were still told that if we were longer than 90 minutes there would be a fine. We were told if any food was left on our plates there would be a fine. I'm not being funny but considering we paid £30 a head (£40 with drinks) for pretty low quality food this was kinda ridiculous to me. Then there were the floors, which had marks where I believe food had been dropped, picked up but never wiped down. My girlfriend then had a trip hazard in the shape of a bundle of wire next to her seat. To conclude this; my biggest regret of the whole night is that I paid £80 for this. I should have refused to pay and urge people to stay far away from this sham of an...