Five Spice BBQ — Restaurant in Cary

This is the best of the Korean BBQ restaurants in the RDU area. While it may be bereft of kitschy robots or a hipster address (it’s tucked away in Cary strip mall purgatory), this restaurant focuses on the important things, and knocks them out of the park - consistently.

The service is nothing less than on point. Food comes out quickly, almost as fast as you can order it, and the grills are promptly replaced as soon as needed. The wait staff understands that, in order for a self cooking experience like this to work, everything needs to be immediately available, on time, and in proper sequence. The focus is on ease of experience, and they get it right. Even when ordered out of sequence or in a large bulk order, food items are sent out correctly. To test this, I purposely ordered a mass of meats and vegetables for grilling first, sent the order, then ordered several appetizers and dim sum in four separate individual orders, then asked for drinks. The kimchi, pickled radish, and soup arrived just after the drinks, and then the dim sum and meats and vegetables for grilling arrived, allowing us to eat while grilling. We placed several more orders for dim sum, meats and vegetables, and they all came out promptly, along with appropriate grill changes. This ensured we could cook, eat, and then order more food in a serial fashion without a gap in time between, allowing us to enjoy the experience seamlessly without worrying about technical details, or trying to order while still eating.

The food is excellent all around, high quality, and there are a lot of choices. This is the true strength of the menu, in my opinion, as it allows each guest plenty of options to tailor their individual experience. There are lean, plain vanilla options like fillet and chicken breast, to fatty options like pork belly and marbled beef, to foodie options like shrimp with heads on. Weirdos like me can suck the juice out of a freshly grilled shrimp head then down some crispy pork fat saturated in soy sauce, and normal people, like my wife, can eat plain ol chicken and steak, cooked well done. The meat, thankfully, is not over seasoned nor too salty, which is a common issue at many restaurants. Instead, they serve it with several delicious sauces as well as soy sauce so that each diner can control the salt and seasoning content of their food. The dim sum is varied enough and well executed and therefore should be mentioned here as well.

Excellent food, excellent service, focus on experience, five stars all around - even...

This place does not serve authentic Korean BBQ, and they shouldn't advertise themselves as a Korean BBQ place. I'm writing as a Korean American and for the sake of those who actually want to eat real Korean BBQ. This place is not run by people who know Korean food at all. I give more specific reasons below, but if you want better, more authentic Korean BBQ, go to Gen Korean BBQ or another Korean restaurant. This place is at best fusion and just okay at that. (The name of the restaurant, "Five Spice,” is an indicator since that is not a spice used in Korean cuisine, but I was willing to give it a try.)

First, they do not serve the traditional cuts of Korean BBQ meat or use traditional Korean marinades; for example, the short ribs tasted like they weren't marinated at all, the pork belly is way too thin (used in a different Asian cuisine), and the "BBQ pork belly" (which is not a thing in Korean cuisine, though spicy pork is) tastes like it was simply sweetened with sugar.

Second, Korean BBQ, which is usually eaten as lettuce wraps, comes with a bean paste called ssamjang. Ssamjang is key to experiencing the full flavor of Korean BBQ. They don't serve this; they only give you dipping sauces (one of which tasted like apple sauce). These are not served in Korean cuisine and just didn't add much flavor.

Third, they serve jasmine rice. I like jasmine rice a lot, but it's not served in Korean cuisine... because it's not Korean rice. This may just be just a matter of personal taste, but jasmine rice has a distinct flavor that doesn't quite go with Korean cuisine.

The quality of the food was okay. Some of the beef cuts were good (if not authentic), the rice was dry, and the kimchi they serve is really bad. The radish side dish is good (though they use Thai chilis to give it a little spice).

The service needs a lot of improvement. Our group spanned two tables and therefore was given two different iPads to order from. Our server kept giving my table's order to the other one, even after we told her. Our grill pans were also not heated up in advance so we had to wait for a while after the meat came before we could start grilling and they also were not changed in a timely manner (we had to request they be changed each time).

Needless to say, my friends and I definitely won't...

I went to Five Spice BBQ last night with a friend because I had never tried a Korean-style barbecue restaurant before. We were seated immediately and were given menus and our drink orders taken. The service is all-you-can-eat for one price and the menu is a list of the items you can order. Our waitress recommended several items we wanted to try first, she put in the order on a tablet and within a few minutes we were given the items. Just a few minutes later on the grill and we were eating! I very much liked that almost right away from arriving we were starting to eat, which is markedly different from traditional restaurants that require your order to be prepared.

We tried a number of items, which included various beef cuts, chicken, seafood, pork and vegetables. They even had lamb on the menu! No matter what you prefer, there are multiple items available. My personal favorites were the spicy pork belly and the marble beef.

For the price of a steak dinner at virtually any other restaurant, we were able to eat much more steak and even other kinds of meat, both marinated and plain. All the dipping sauces were excellent and the quality of all the meat was very high.

The atmosphere was lively but not too loud or crowded. Our server Lily was amazing and helped us to school our food to perfection! You can also cook everything yourself, if you prefer.

Everything about the experience was great, and I highly recommend to anyone who is considering it or likes high-quality restaurants. Give it a try and you will not be disappointed! Can’t wait to go back the next time I want to stuff myself with...