KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot — Restaurant in Aurora

Worst Korean bbq experience I’ve ever had.

To start, the restaurant was sticky & wet which you notice upon entry. Sitting down at our booth, my bf stepped in a huge puddle of grease, followed by a huge piece a steak that was just on the floor under the table. There’s virtually no foot room beneath the table because of the heating mechanism. I wear a size 8 woman’s shoe & my foot couldn’t fit vertically between the base of the booth & the table.

You quickly notice that nobody that works there wants to be there. The waitress sat us & quickly explained we should order everything through a disgustingly sticky tablet she left at the table, though not before managing to get two long strands of hair stuck in the cooking tray as she placed it. When you have gigantic curly hair maybe tie it back, since the food is being cooked at the tables you’re serving. We hardly saw her again after that so I guess it doesn’t matter much.

At other Korean bbq places the waiter will gladly explain the process. We told our waitress we were new & yet got no explanation. Because of this, my boyfriend put far too much meat onto the grill as I was checking out their “blue wall” (more on that later) which slowed down our dining experience. Not entirely their fault, but easily prevented by good service from the wait staff.

Now for the “blue wall.” Truly just a dirty, open bar of various sauces and things one can add to a sauce (like green onion, chopped garlic). There were 3 different peanut sauces, & only one had a label in an ambiguous spot on the glass above. As someone with a deadly peanut allergy, this was alarming. I had to ask workers what everything was because there were maybe 6 labels to 12+ different trays of ambiguous fluids, & these workers were not easy to track down despite the place being nearly empty (we arrived 2 hours before close — more on this later too). I felt very uncomfortable touching everything, because all the surfaces & containers were sticky. The “clean” dishes & cutlery looked gross & were covered in crud & soap stains.

Now here’s where the service got exponentially worse & more aggressive. Let me preface this section by saying I know no one wants to have to stay late due to customers, & working in food service annoyingly comes with leaving work past when the restaurant closes to the public. That being said, it’s also completely expected to allow customers to eat past close so they can continue to have a comfortable experience. Let me further add that they closed at 11:30 PM on Saturdays & we were out by 11:30-35.

At 10:40 we were told by our waitress (who suddenly appeared again) that the kitchen closes at 11. Perfectly fine. Then at 10:47 a buss boy comes over & rushes us to place our food orders as quickly as possible. I show him the time & tell him we’ll have some more food placed. We were urged again before he left. We placed our additional food orders promptly since they were clearly in a rush. Mind you we only needed so long because poor service lead to us having a slower dining experience. Once our food came out, we realized they didn’t bring us everything we’d ordered because they were in such a rush.

Between 10:50 & 11:25 the restaurant employees decided they would just close AROUND us. Suddenly all these workers appear like roaches, headphones on, barking “excuse me!” as they start taking anything they can away from us. We would’ve ordered more drinks had we been able to. They even took my boyfriend’s water before he was done drinking it. I had to give him my water bottle from my purse & it was only 11:08 at this point. This would be understandable levels of aggressive if it was 30 minutes after closing, but we hadn’t event hit the restaurant’s official close yet. The workers clearly didn’t care or want to be there.

Overall the experience was gross, unfriendly & mismanaged. The food was delicious but that’s not really a saving grace when you feel like it’s going to give you worms due to the conditions it’s been kept in. I’m sure any other k-bbq place around could provide a...

Gotta love a new KBBQ place. KPot has a lot going for them. Their menu of course has the options of KBBQ, Hot Pot or both. We opted for the both since it was our first time here. Now this is the second official day for them and unfortunately they did not have everything available on the menu. For this reason alone, I docked off a star. They did not have milk tea, fountain drinks, and a handful of meat options available. It was unfortunate but we of course still decided to continued with our dinner. Currently, dinner price is 31.99 for one option and +$5 if you choose to do both.

Our server was Brandi, and she was an awesome. Very transparent and communicated with us with items that are not available. she was also quick to correct an incorrect order for us as well. She did a great job at checking in with our table and was very helpful with her suggestions. We even had a neighboring server checking in and interacting with us when our server was assisting other tables. They even were so kind to lower the music down a little as it was too loud for my son. There were tons of employees on the clock which contributed to tables being cleaned and food being received pretty quickly. The menu itself is pretty extensive and does offer a lot of my go-to dishes.

The overall look and feel of KPot, reminded me heavily of GEN KBBQ, which is really sleek and clean. There's blue lighting going on giving it a calm and relaxing ambiance. They have a massive bar and a few TVs which are great for sports games. It looks like the majority of seats are booths which are nice and comfy and the tables are set in a way that you do have a grill and heating plates for hot pot. The grill vents drop from the ceiling and remind us how it is in Korea. Only downside to that is that it's eye level and can block you from interacting with your group. Regarding their bathrooms, the way the sink is styled, if you are dining with a younger kid, there's no way to sit on the counter and it may be too high for them to wash their hands. I would strongly recommend having a little stool for their younger guests.

As far as food goes, we were still upset about the amount of items that weren't available yet. However, with the food that we did get to try, we were completely satisfied. Now my husband is Korean and his family's galbi recipe is superior. Every other place we've had it at has been subpar. BUT LET ME TELL YOU.. KPOT's galbi marinade surprised us. We weren't expecting anything special, but seriously, we were impressed. Other than that, we tend to gravitate to non marinated items on the menu so everything else that we had was still very good. Banchan is not served table side like most restaurants, instead it is located in the back with the sauce bar, which is new to us. But the great thing about that is that you control how much or how little you want. Their hot bar is small but consisted of fries, nuggets and mandoo, all of which were surprisingly pretty good. My 4 year old didn't eat much, but he was pretty happy with those options. I do wish that there were more banchan options though. Their sauce bar is build your own and they do offer premade sauces as well.

KPot stands out way more than other KBBQ options in the general Denver area. Just some observations, 1) No one else does AYCE KBBQ & Hot Pot (well). 2) the whole menu is available to you, with the exception of lunch and dinner only items. It's not done in "Sets" or Option A, B, C etc. 3) Currently there is no limit on how much galbi you can order during your visit. 4) They have a build your own sauce bar. I know many AYCE hotpot places have this option, but not KBBQ.

Final Notes: The plan for my family is to return later this month and hope that they have everything available again. And if they do, then 100% the rating will be 5/5. This place is definitely top tier in comparison to all other competitors in our area.

That being said: Food 9/10 Service 10/10 Ambiance 10/10 Cleanliness...

I went to celebrate Father’s Day with my family, including my 4 month old baby. When we walked in we told the server there would be 4 of us plus a stroller. They sat us at the end table. I had my stroller because my baby was going to take a nap and the server asked if I could move my stroller, I let her know that I needed my stroller next to me because my baby would be going in there soon but, if the stroller was in the way I would happily move to a table where it wasn’t. She said it was fine. A few minutes later another server came and asked about my stroller, again I said I needed it but will happily move if it’s in the way. Then the manager comes and tells me that the stroller is a fire hazard and needs to be moved. I tell him we already let the servers know we will move and it’s not a problem. He kept going back and forth about how the stroller is on the way and that we are in the way, I let him know we can move but it’s frustrating because we told them from the beginning that we would have a stroller. He then stated that he didn’t know why I was getting frustrated as “he was doing me a favor by letting me eat there” I told him he wasn’t doing us a favor at all, he was simply accommodating guest. He said that he was the only trying to help us and basically we should be happy he is working with us. We pointed out a table where we could move to where the stroller wouldn’t be in the way and he went on a whole tangent about how “he wasn’t sure if he could move us there because they’re so busy and they could possibly be seating someone else there.” We then asked what his solution was because we were simply wanting to enjoy our meal. He didn’t have a solution and didn’t have anywhere for us to sit. While all this was going on some random guest came over and shoved his hand in face stating that he was a fire marshall and the stroller was a fire hazard. We told him that we know and that like we said multiple times we don’t have a problem moving. However, the manager is still going on and on about how he is doing us a favor by working with us. At one point I even agreed to just move the stroller completely out the way and hold my baby in my arms while he napped and try to eat with one hand, just to get the manager to stop antagonizing, and putting us down. This didn’t make a difference, as his ego was too high to just drop it.

As a new mom this was completely overwhelming, I felt completely unwelcome and felt that the manager was creating a huge scene simply because I needed my stroller. I understand that this was a fire hazard but, the way it was handled was completely inappropriate. There was no need to cause a huge scene like that, make me feel bad for needing my stroller and letting the situation escalate like that. On top of that, they did nothing to stop the random guest from yelling in my face, for literally no reason.

This place is NOT family friendly, and with that not ADA friendly.

The staff need better and proper training to learn what is/isn’t a fire hazard to avoid this happening in the future, and to know where they can/can’t seat people with strollers. The manager needs better training to come with solutions instead of spending 20 minutes arguing and ruining peoples dinner. The manager also needs training to know how to effectively communicate with people instead of coming to people and creating bigger problems and then wondering why people are “frustrated”

This situation was handled so poorly that we ended up just leaving before we even got to eat. That was a better solution than to have the manager just putting us down, and never finding a solution and have random guest...