Manna Shabu — Restaurant in Carrollton

First time dining here. We went late afternoon around 3pm. Atmosphere- ok a lot of TVs, music was playing, restaurant was clean. Seating consisted of mainly booths.

Service- after my friends arrived a waitress arrived to take our order. Given this was hot pot style dinning I would have expected an explanation of how they do things or at least asked if we have been there before but she did not. We made our order and proceeded to get our fixings for our soup from the buffet. Our waitress then went on break or went home and no one was even looking in our direction. After a minimum of twenty minutes we finally flagged someone down. My friend didn't like the seafood broth and wanted to switch. We were advised there was a $5 charge to do so despite this being an "all you can eat" dinner. There was also a note on the menu advising you will be charged full price for any meat not eaten. My friend chose to just keep her soup. At this time our drinks still hadn't been refilled and we had to ask for a manager to complain about the service. We were advised that they were not there but would be there in about 30mins. We said we wanted to speak to them about the poor service when they got in. Well they stepped up the service enough to get dirty plates out of the way and refill drinks. They even swapped out the broth for us. Ok things are looking up and then my friend found a small bug on some veggies she had just put in her soup. Called the waitress to let her know. She said sorry and left. Did not even offer to get her a fresh bowl of broth. We were pretty much done at this point. And no manager ever came by.

Another thing that proved problematic was the booths. There were 4 of us so the person on the inside had to keep asking to be let out to visit the buffet. Not a great setup when people will be getting up frequently. There wasn't much room between the table and the booth. It was very uncomfortable being forced to sit at a hard 90° angle throughout the meal because the table was so close. And no I am not a large person.

Food- it was not bad. I felt they had a nice selection of meat and additional items to add to your hot pot. The broth however wasn't very flavorful. You really had to work to use all the available sauces to get a good flavor. I've been to other places where the broth was well seasoned already.

Overall I wouldn't recommend this place, too...

Summary: Service was terrible for the last 3 visits. We were ignored after being served our first plates of meat and was not checked in on during the entire time.

Typically the service and staff are amazing; they usually are nice, attentive, and overall wonderful people. But the past few times I have visited with friends, they have provided terrible service. I can understand if it is busy during dinner time - that’s normal & of course waiting time would be longer, that’s also completely understandable. That wasn’t the reason for my review, it is the staff’s behavior which is why I am writing this review specifically for the Carrollton location.

At first our server was looking left and right and checking in on everyone, but had skipped our table. I thought it must’ve been a coincidence and maybe they had just forgotten. But our server had done this multiple times and although other servers are not responsible for our table, they saw my empty table with finished meat and continued to walk past. The only way we could get our server or another server’s attention was by pressing the call button or raising our hand, which was okay, but it didn’t feel the greatest when all the servers were being friendly and checking in on all tables but mine.

They have done this for 3 visits out of the 20+ times me and my friends have gone to eat there. Although the food itself is pretty decent, I feel that having this experience for the 3rd time makes me want to steer away from this location. But I am more than happy to check out the other Manna locations. As I mentioned, the food is pretty decent and the price itself isn’t too bad (although, be aware they do automatically put in gratuity for 3 people now instead of the 5 minimum people), and I would love to continue to eat at Manna, but just not at the Carrollton location. Thanks...

This is more my wife's gig. Her son recommended we dine at Manna Shabu Hot Pot during a recent Dallas visit.

Korean style dining and cuisine. We were escorted to a table which is equipped with six built-in electric heaters. Each heater may be individually set from warm to boiling hot.

We first chose our individual broths. Chicken for me. Fish broth for the wife and some family members.

We then chose our proteins. Our three choices were steak, lamb and a seafood. Other choices also available.

Broths were brought to our table. We placed them on the heaters to bring them to boil. The process takes several minutes

In the interim, we checked out the buffet table. There, we found all sorts of veggies, noodles, dumplings, food balls, etc. Also, various Asian sauces. Standard Korean fare such as kimchi (which was very good, btw). Some sliced fruit. Also, raw uncooked shelled eggs.

Since my tastes are not as varied when it comes to Asian cooking, I limited myself to Ramen noodles, spinach, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, some shelled eggs as well as side plates of fruit, kimchi and I tried some pickled onions (also quite good).

I then scooped the veggies and uncooked eggs into the heated soup bowl. After a few minutes, the soup was ready to eat. A few minutes afterward, so were the eggs, now hard-boiled and ready to peel and eat as well.

The rest of the family dined on the seafood and meat, as well as other items from the buffet table.

Manna was a big hit with the entire family. An interesting alternative to the typical Asian soup offerings.

A little on the pricey side, imo. But it is technically all-you-can-eat. Makes for some family conversation at the table, which is difficult to come by in this age of cell...