Moodaepo Korean BBQ — Restaurant in Carrollton

This is the new hype AYCE KBBQ in Dallas, so of course, I had to stop by! I stopped being a fan of AYCE KBBQ after a bad experience with Gen, and I prefer quality KBBQ more (Ari/Burnin92). However, I decided to give Moodaepo a try because they offer "high quality" meats for a fixed price of $39.

First, $39 is quite a high price tag. It's $10+ more compared to other AYCE places in the area (Gen, Omi, Manna, etc). If you can eat a lot, then it's worth it, but if you're trying KBBQ for the first time, then maybe not. I see that they charge $29 for kids, which is ridiculously high for someone who can't eat a lot. I think kids' prices should be $15 max.

I called to check if they offer AYCE before 5 PM, and they said yes. We came in around 3 PM on a Saturday, and it took about 5 mins for us to talk to someone. The host took down our names and said it would be a 35-45 mins wait. She said they'll text us when our table is ready so we left to go shopping for a bit. After 30 mins, we received a text saying please check-in. We came after 5 mins, and it took 10 mins for someone to acknowledge us. We noticed the owner walking back and forth, but he didn't even bother to take a look at our party of 3 or other guests who were waiting in the lobby area. Of course, he's probably busy talking to the workers but I heard him yell the host's name across the restaurant and I was like "heh... that's kinda rude". Either way, she checked us in and brought us to the table.

We sat down at 3:45 PM, it was right after lunch and before the dinner rush. She came back with our drinks and apologized that service is slow due to low staffing, and to be aware of that. I asked if we can order our meats first, and she said sure, but she's not our waiter. She took our order down and I ordered 8 different types of meat just so we have a good amount to start with. We started eating the side dishes, which are pretty basic but they do have a variety. They also have a refillable side dishes bar if you want to grab more kimchi or fish cakes.

We estimated that it would take about 10 mins for the meats to arrive, but 4 mins later, a cute little robot came rolling with all our meats. I was surprised at how fast the service was, at least for the meats to come out. However, our table didn't have any sauce tray, and we had to turn on the stove ourselves.

The meats were pretty high quality and my boyfriend said it's the best KBBQ he has eaten in Dallas. He said some cuts were better than Ari which I do agree with, especially how much more we get here. We didn't get any seasoned meats, because we wanted to focus on the meat quality themselves. I like the boneless short ribs the most, but their brisket, beef tongue, pork jowl, and bulgogi are pretty good too. Their steamed egg is HUGE, but it was pretty salty. Their corn cheese was disappointing. It came in a small metal tray with corn and mozzarella cheese on top, and we put it on the grill hoping it'll melt correctly. It was hard and not what we expected for corn cheese...

Nobody checked on us the entire time unless I get up and pull over someone. We were out of the water and we didn't get our water refilled for 10+ mins. We sat by the wall, so nobody came over to that side besides the robot delivering food. Halfway through, I asked for sesame oil and the server was like "oh, you guys don't have sauce trays yet?". He came back with our sauce trays but I wish they walked by to check on that. I had to get up and call on someone every time we wanted to order more meats or change the grill.

Overall, I do enjoy their high-quality meats, but their service needs to be improved. The owner should also be greeting customers at the door instead of making eye contact and turning his head around. I tried to pull him over to say that we were checking in but he just turned and walked to the back. I'll give it another try when my friends visit, and hopefully, the service will...

This place was a sendoff BBQ gathering for a young talented friend of ours pursuing a military career in the USMC, and bunch of us showed up for a time of fellowship in a restaurant best described as a self-serving, meat buffet of grilled marinated Asian food!

Moodaepo is worth your visit if you just want to impress your guests or visitors. However, on a scale from one to five, where five stars represents a dining place for regular, returning customers...this place is a four.

Great Place! My only negative comment is that Moodaepo is fairly new. It's my first time being here and it was incredibly packed to the brim during our Sunday dinner and this location was severely understaffed so that effected our drink and food times.

The human servers were really nice, but my family and I had no clue what their names were because our attention was on these autonomous robot servers that looked like a moving bookshelf with wheels. Both servers delivered our food and you can tell the difference between the two, one was nice pretty cool and the other was terrifying for our little kids.

Even with this customer service, I don't think they would be sufficient enough on intensely busy evenings, For instance on a Sunday Night Football game during the regular season. Forget trying to get a seat here because the wait time was bad. I would probably visit on a non-busy weekday.

Other than that, foods decent but the ambience is great! Its like entering an open air street market in an enclosed space. There was a drink station, dessert place, and I guess a butcher shop lined up on one side, while the dining area has tables with a gas grill built in the center of each table top. The bathroom looks clean but the self-cook ramen stations were dirty, and the only ramen packages available were the spicy ramen noodle kinds.

I'd give this place a second chance. Especially if I find out they offered military discounts for disgruntled veterans like myself... because I'm cheap and allergic to overpriced items.

I don't think I'd be a returning customer anytime soon since there are better options with better value elsewheres. If you made it this far to read this... I only recommend this place at a value...

I’ve been to this spot before a few times, last year on my birthday as well. I went this year on my birthday and made sure to call a day ahead for a reservation for 12. That, was the worst service I’ve ever had in an establishment in my life. Our waitress was rude and short with us, we would constantly have to remind them for our order to get it to the table and towards the end they started to ignore us completely unless we tagged them down. We would start to order our next three meats but before we could even finish talking they would just walk away. They rarely took plates away or didn’t switch out our grills, kept turning our grills off when we would tell them that the grill was burning. Some people in my group didn’t have rice or water for half of the meal. I understand that it was busy, but my last straw was when the waitress took plates away and got raw meat juice all over my pants and phone and didn’t apologize until my friend called her out (after like 10 minutes of us trying to tag her down). Her “apology” was very monotone and she didn’t really seem to care. At that point I just wanted to leave, and this experience completely ruined my birthday. When getting the bill we noticed that the bill was higher than we thought. We took a closer look at the receipt and saw that they had added gratuity. Most places that take parties of more than 6 add gratuity, this isn’t new, but this information was not provided anywhere on the menu or informed to us, and with the kind of service we experienced, we didn’t want to tip at all. (we did anyways because it was included in our bill)

I ended up taking my cake to cut somewhere else since the atmosphere was so loud and they made us feel like we weren’t welcome. Not just our waitress, but most of the staff seemed like they did not want to work at all and was constantly either ignoring us or interrupting us. I’m not sure if there was a change in management but this place is not worth it anymore. I will not be coming back or recommending them, and will be steering others away. I’ve never been treated so poorly at an establishment to a point of tears, please go...