Bonchon Allston — Restaurant in Boston

I had the worst experience today. I am completely mind blown and speechless. Never have I ever received this type of service/treatment for takeout. I work in the industry and worked at a competing restaurant (past) and I understand the process of cooking the chicken, and wait time. I ordered on Yelp for take-out today at 3:45pm. I got the email and everything, and when I arrived to the restaurant my boyfriend went inside and said that they did not have my order (okay, no big deal we can figure this out), he then texts me that he sees the slip and the the employee had told him she had “forgot to send it” (okay, again, no big deal; i get it, when taking an order from these apps most places have to manually put it in). She then asks him does he want to wait and she can rush an order and “it’ll be 15-20mins”. He texted me and asked if that’s okay, I said as long as it’s not another 30 mins then I don’t mind. We would have never agreed if she had said 30-45 mins. We were already waiting in the car for 20 mins. She said she’d give us a discount, which was not my intention but it was nice enough to offer since it was their mistake on their end.

I’m sitting in the car, my boyfriend is inside waiting. The employees are well aware of his presence, but does not once alert him “it’ll be 10 more mins” or even apologize for the wait. All we ordered was small wings, French fries, and the salmon avocado salad. I saw at least 10 people go in and out and grab their food with no issue. Quick go in and go out. Finally it’s been at least 40 mins, and he goes and asks where the food was. The employee was confused. Then the girl that took the order had forgotten it behind the sushi bar... this whole time it was already ready..... be he was standing there when the time was up. And the girl was just too busy texting on her phone. He comes into the car with the food and tells me the story, I look in the bag, fries are soggy, no chopsticks, no napkins, no nothing. I go inside because I was honestly disappointed in everything. I go inside and asked them what the deal was. Why was this experience like this? What was the issue? When I was talking to the girl, I explained her my frustration, and she proceeds to say “you cancelled the order” and I asked her why would I do that when I’ve been waiting in the car for almost an hr. If I was going to do something like that I would not leave my car running for that long for no reason. I showed her the email and said “well I didn’t cancel it, it was you” and then I asked her so how come when my bf was in here you couldn’t even alert him about the time. She said “the avocado salmon salad takes a long time” it takes 40 mins for that salad?!? The double fried chicken wings takes about 30 mins between frying, and saucing, and packaging. How can a sushi appetizer take that long unless it was a hamachi Kama or hotate hokiyaki. She doesn’t even apologize for anything and proceeds to blame it on me and the salad. There wasn’t even a promised discount on there to makeup for their mistake. So you offered a solution but didn’t even go by it. I also asked her why did you tell my bf it’d be 20-30 mins and her response was “I didn’t I told him 30-45mins” she then just said I’ll return the food and give you your money back. At that point the food was already cooled off because when it got into the car I opened up the fries to see and it was just ‘warm’ no crunch, no heat. I told her I would never have agreed to wait another 30 mins if that’s what she had said in the first place. And why would my boyfriend lie to me when he didn’t even want bonchon in the first place. It was me who wanted it, so he had nothing to gain out of waiting longer. So at the end of the day, total time wasted on bonchon takeout with no takeout was about 1hr 30mins, and still left hungry. First meal of the day, great way to start my day.

I then called later to speak to the manager and asked for the girls name. The guy refused to let me speak to anyone or answer my question and responded to me...

I don't know what happened in the past year, but everything at Bonchon has absolutely plunged in value. The ingredients in all of the appetizers have gone way down in value, I might as well have bought microwavable dumplings at 7-11.

The main course of this review, much like our meal, was the 30-piece chicken strips - everything from the quantity of food, to the quality of the chicken and the breading process has gone to hell. I've had better fried chicken at KFC, it was completely dried out and instead of the hand cut strips taken from a chicken breast, the new owner/manager/chef/WHATEVER of this place seems to be ordering the same precut chicken products that you find in supermarket-freezer microwaveable chicken tendies, then barely dripping sauce over them.

Their new method seems to be to cut costs any which way they can, as the old restaurant used to bring you Korean cole slaw and radishes, their new pennies-saving method has you choosing which of those two you want served (they literally ask which one you want instead of bringing you both). We chose the radishes (which they now serve half the amount the used to, again with the pennies-saving bulls**t) which was the right choice, because the ignorance in their chef's methods came to light when we were served American cole slaw instead of Korean. That's right, the same cheap mayonnaise filled garbage you get at Red Lobster they serve at Bonchon instead of the Korean cole slaw they used to and are still supposed to serve.

We went to Bonchon to see if it really did go downhill, I didn't expect a cliff dive. Save your time, trouble and money, it's...

Dear BonChon Allston, if you’re going to fire someone, do it somewhere your customers are not able to hear and see the whole employee termination. What your manager did today was not only unacceptable but also UNPROFESSIONAL! I came in today with my family to enjoy lunch but instead we saw a hostile and unresolved confrontation between management and employee that escalated and involved police. The problem is over a uniform shirt and that management didn’t know how to handle the situation but to laugh in the guys face, put his headphones on and not work out the matter. Not to mention he threatened the employee for termination over said uniform without warning in front of potential witnesses. This whole scene could have been avoided if the manager could have been more professional about it instead of treating like it was a joke. I have my 9 month old son and my 80 y/o grandma here watching and listening to the whole conversation. Do you think that was family friendly? From over the years that I’ve dined here, this employee has been honest and hard working. With or without a uniform it does not define his work ethics. Not to mention he’s the only black employee I’ve ever seen over the years, and he gets fired on the spot for defending himself and having customers defending him as well? Just saying, Its ridiculous. I’m ashamed of you and your unprofessionalism. This matter have should have been...