TOP BBQ GRILL — Restaurant in Buena Park

This place was "okay." I hadn't been to a Korean BBQ joint in years and my sister wanted to go here for her bday. In the past however, I had tried pretty much all of the kbbq places in Orange county and San Diego county.

The service was friendly. They change your grill often and are attentive to that. it was lively and there was a big wait of 17 parties that i noticed as we were leaving. Getting there at 430pm was just right though. We barely waited at all. One thing i didn't like was that we were only allowed to order and eat for 90 minutes. Maybe this is the norm these days for places like these but i remember in the past, a 3 hour limit was pretty common. There was lots of parking iirc.

On to the important part - the food. I bet the biggest draw people have for this place is that it almost feels like a buffet inside. You can grab a plate and get as much of whatever side dish you enjoy most. I know many people love the kbbq side dishes and I'm sure that they love it if you love them too. After all, the more you load up on carbs and side dishes, the less meat you'll be able to eat.

The meats/protein selection was not the greatest. It could use some more choices. Out of all the meats that we ordered, i probably enjoyed maybe one of them, if even. All the meat, even the pre-marinated steak... was bland and flavorless. Sure you can get your own dipping sauces etc... but you shouldn't NEED them in order to give your bland meat any flavor at all. But true to the buffet style and feel, aside from the typical side dishes, there were a couple things that were fairly tasty.

My favorite meat, beef tongue, was not an option here unless you pay for it a la carte. I think they said it was $17 for some beef tongue. F that lol. Did not buy. The fluffy egg thing that many places offer (usually one per person) was also extra. Did not buy either. I noticed they had rib fingers or whatever it's called that many places seemed to offer. I'm not a fan of thin cuts of meat like brisket so I ordered the rib pieces. After cooking them, I instantly noticed that they have tendons or something in them that were so though that I could not chew through the meat. I thought maybe that was just that one piece I had but every single piece was the same. After chewing them for a bit, I actually ended up spitting out almost all of them.

The squid tasted okay. Although it was marinated, it didn't taste that special. I don't ever usually order pork at these places or the chicken so i can't say anything about those.

Overall, I think it's safe for me to say that I enjoyed the side dishes more than the meat, but that's not really saying much. if you're looking for lots of different cuts of meat that are flavorful with or without your own sauce, I think it's better if you look elsewhere. After years of not eating at Korean barbecue places, I would have expected better quality/flavored meat from a newer joint. Feeling rushed to order and eat a bunch of bland ordinary meat is not really my style, so needless to say, I would never recommend this place to anyone looking for a good KBBQ joint. Even the generic chain Gen BBQ was better than this. I probably won't ever come...

Former Pine Hill Korean BBQ is now Gogiya.

Dropped by all-you-can-eat BBQ for lunch. Parking is easy and the place was not..busy..at..all... which was the first sign in where I thought I would regret walking in. The lunch price was incredibly cheap, perhaps because this particular plaza had 2 all-you-can-eat BBQ adjacent to one another. Usually, cheap price is not a good sign, unless you know, it had like 10k reviews with 4.5 stars or something. The restaurants should be competing against the quality of the meat or the variety of side-dishes available at the buffet as opposed trying to lure customers with lowering the price which should literally be their last resort.

After taking a look at the buffet (and without much expectation), we decided to have the $12.99 all-you-can-eat BBQ where you can only pick and choose meat from the buffet (without ordering through the menu which was few dollars more expensive). I recommend eating the non-marinated meat as the marinated meat were pretty much.. "you want some meat with that salt?" salty. We left the comment to the waitress and she advised that the comment will be relayed to the owner/kitchen.

As for the dessert that you were very curious about, do yourself a favor and have bingsoo elsewhere. Not only the machine seemed unattended, it was literally continuously shooting away the shave ice with no human around. I didn't want to touch the handle.

As a supporter of local businesses, I wanted to add a few comments to the business owner. Unfair/improper treatment against the employee is not simply a frown upon the worker, but the business owner as well. Probation can be iterated to advise good behavior, but is it worth the shame that will fall on the owner? At the end of the day, it is the owner's responsibility to put less salt in the marinated sauce or to help workers develop into a happy, diligent employee. My mother was also a waitress at a K-BBQ in San Francisco, I know how difficult job it is. But I guarantee you, the treatment from the owner has a greater impact.

I highly recommend the restaurant's do-over on the menu so that the "cheap price" is out of the picture so the quality of the meat can be displayed and highlighted. Just leave the "cheap option" out so no one talks/disses about it. Change to good options with respective menus so that no one's expecting something like senior prices from IHOP.

I also recommend the restaurant to develop and redesign the treatment to employees. I've never seen so many shout-out to an individual employee at a restaurant (I mean hair salons, nail salons yes, but BBQ?) I can only imagine the mental stress of the employee just from seeing so many sympathetic reviews. Let's promote good environment for both customers and employees, even the slightest changes are...

I hate to be leaving such a poor review for what was once one of our favorite KBBQ establishments for the value of its offerings, but the childish behavior and disrespect we received from management/ownership here is inexcusable. We’ve never had a dining experience ruined quite like this. We used to recommend this location and bring friends here but will be refraining from doing so moving forward.

We were informed of last call at 10:30pm, when we kindly informed our server that we were done with ordering for the night, as we were still grilling our intestine (which takes a while to cook). By 10:45pm, an older male which we assume was the owner or manager on duty came over and aggressively gestured with his fingers that they close at 11pm. We had already paid and were finishing up our meat. We could see him in the background just pacing back and forth while keeping his eye on us. By 11pm we were already packing up and on our way out, being mindful of the closing time. Right at 11pm, he repeatedly prompted us that he has 3 people waiting to go home. There were at least 10 other staff members in the restaurant. And that’s fine, they can go home AT 11pm WHEN YOU CLOSE. He kept hovering over us and had the audacity to ask us why we were upset and we told him because he was being rude. His ego must have been hurt because he brought out one of his kitchen staff to intimidate us into leaving even quicker, while we were already on our way out. As we were exiting, this man violently slams the gate behind us before we even make it to the front door. My foot had just barely crossed the gate. I can’t imagine how the staff here is treated if this is how customers are treated by him. I’m not at all bothered because we’ll be issuing a chargeback for the poor behavior and blatant disrespect. This man will single handedly be responsible for the downfall of this establishment. I hope this gets passed along to him, and others who are considering patronizing this restaurant will reconsider. KBBQ spots are a dime a dozen in this area and there are many offering...