Gen Korean BBQ House — Restaurant in Cerritos

If you want to eat at a place where the servers treat u like the gunk off the grill and the meat is as flavorful as licking a piece of cardboard off the ground of skid row, then I would recommend this sad excuse for a Korean bbq restaurant. We came here around 11:40 on a Thursday and once we went in they were rude off the bat. We got sat right next to the dishes when we were one of the two parties there. I’ll just list everything that went wrong to make it easier to read.

Once we sat down our server asked if we have been there before, which we have not, and just said “oh” and didn’t even ask if we wanted any drinks or food yet. He quite literally just stared with the blankest expression on his annoyed face. When our server was placing down the side dishes, a fly landed on the mashed potatoes and he looked at the fly then at me and proceeded to walk away without giving me a chance to say anything. After he came back, he just took the potatoes and never gave us a second one. When we ordered we got our drinks and rice first before looking at the menu, our drinks got there by the time our second round of meat was on the grill and our rice never arrived. The rice paper was more like rice plastic. When I took a bite out of my meat wrapped in the rice paper, I was startled since I thought the meat was the issue (it was just not for this reason) and I realized that it was impossible to chew the rice paper. It was like biting a straw. The meat quality was most definitely questionable, for the same price I could’ve gotten better meat. It was all white and a hint of pink, usually it would’ve been reddish but no. The flavor of ALL the meats are the exact same. It was as if you were expecting to drink a nice bottle of coke and all you get is water. Not even joking, I could taste the chopsticks more than the actual meat. I asked a waiter for soy sauce, since every kbbq that I went to has soy sauce, but the face of disgust this lady had, you would’ve thought I asked for the blood of her veins. Instead of politely saying they didn’t have any, she said “if you looked at the menu then you would’ve seen the sauces” and walked away without a care in the world. We had a question about what a certain meat was, and every time we tried to get anyone’s attention at that point, they all pretended like we weren’t there. There was a certain server who was standing RIGHT NEXT TO ME and I said excuse me and she stood there and then walked away. Mind you, there was 3 parties there at that point. We were there for about an hour and a half, and we only got one refill of the rice paper even though we asked and reminded our server about 3 times. Which wasn’t too bad since the rice paper was bad either way. We asked to change grills to a different server and he looked at us and said “I’m not your server” but then when the same guy came back around, what I’m assuming was their manager was near, we asked again and he did it without saying a word. We ordered Korean fried chicken to try it since it sounded good, but tell me how the hell do you overcook and undercook the chicken at the same time. Maybe it’s because the chicken was probably frozen but when I took a bite, it was dry and hard on the outside and when I took it out of my mouth it was pink in the middle. We had to put it back on the grill even thought they said it was ready to eat as served. There’s a lot of more things I would say but I don’t want to make this too long. It was a terrible experience and i strongly discouraged people from coming here. If you want better food and service go to Arisu in Buena Park. I was still kind enough to tip but damn. And the worst part of this is, I paid for this torment. If I could give this a negative number it would still be too high. Goodluck on whoever goes here without looking at the...

My girlfriend and I used to come to Gen's often, we went for the first time in 4 years last night. Wow, it is not the experience we remember. The Mrs. claims it is our worst dining experience ever (I would put it maybe second or third). It was a Friday night, around 20:50, so of course we expected it to be busy and we were fine with waiting. So we check in at the main location and wait the 30 minutes outside of the building, everything seemed well handled there. However, when we were summoned inside, we were instructed to go to the new secondary building just down the way. Now the scene there is definitely not completely the fault of the staff... but it was chaos. It was the complete opposite to the main building. The staff did not appear to completely know what was going on. Long story short, we had to wait almost another hour. Which again, we understand that it was a Friday and sometimes it gets like that. However, we continued to be disappointed once we were seated. The hostess seated us and didn't say anything, then a few minutes later a server appeared and asked us what we wanted. He hurriedly put an order for some recommended items and two waters, as we requested, then said he would be back. We were brought a few small sides and then that is all we heard for maybe around 10 minutes. Then finally some meat comes to us. Though we have not been given plates, tongs, utensils, or anything that we need to start. We got the attention of another server, because ours was nowhere to be found, who brought us some plates and tongs (they all acted like it was an extreme burden). Here's the thing, by this point it was after 10pm and the place was beginning to die down, yet we still were not be attended to in the slightest. We waited another 10 minutes before we saw our waiter again and had to ask him for our waters. We put in for meats at this time because we did not know when we would see him again. On several occasions we asked for items that we never got, such as two plates of meat and sides, such as kimchi. It was 11pm and we had only had one round of meat and seen our waiter maybe twice... we had been seated for an hour. We ordered one more round of meat and also asked for some more sides. We asked about them a few times, though we never got them, instead our waiter was laughing and talking with his co-workers. Look I completely understand how it gets, I used to work food service, but at this point we wanted to just eat the stuff we ordered and leave. We never got the sides. So we just ate our last plate of meat and finally got his attention for the cheque. 5 mins later he came to take it, there is very few people here at this point, it is half empty and they are about to close. I watched him take it behind the counter, leave it with someone, then proceed to go to the other side of the restaurant to go and talk to his friends. We waited over 10 mins just for our card back, it was 23:35 at this point, past their closing time. The weirdest thing is that we tried to make conversation with him, saying that tonight was a really busy night, and he tells us "no this is not even really busy tonight, this is quite calm", yet we did not get half of our orders and were never checked on, we had to grab the attention of servers every time. I like to give food service staff the benefit of the doubt and I usually do not think much of it (like I said, I used to work food service). However, this was a very very negative experience and I do not think we will ever come back to Gen's. Red Palace is around the corner and I think we would've avoided a lot of these problems if we had eaten there. We spent over 3 hours at Gen's where we could've spent half of the time elsewhere. I would recommend avoiding Gen's in favour of...

(MANGER I CANNOT BELIEVE ) The food and staff were good. I wish I could give this restaurant a better rating but my recent visit showed me I cannot. I have frequent this restaurant many times. Never had an issue. I understand the wait time, and the fact that when its your turn your on stand-by to be seated. I went this thrusday night, it was busy with a regular crowd along with people graduating. My party celebrating as well. It was an hour wait. Which was fine. We were called to stand-by. When placing our spot I explained we and a baby with and we would like to be seated inside. They said no problem and it shouldn't add to the wait time givin. So an hour goes by were told to be on stand-by for the purpose we were gonna get seated very soon. Well we waited another hour in the cold to be seated. And no we couldn't go in our car they have a already stopped the message alreat has we were to seated next so if were not there we lose our spot. Within the extra hour I asked a couple of times when we were next. They said soon. Okay I just wanted to because of my tired mother and baby. Were also told we would be seated soon so we can step inside. We waited 5mins inside when a gentleman said we had to go outside we were confused and told him the hostess said for our party to be inside. He said no and to go outside. Not saying sorry but go outside. Okay we went outside, were waiting and see a party of 6 very young adults arrive and a few of them go to place there party, the other half we see seat themselves at a table. If you have gone to kbbq you know that isnt how it work. If the possible chance they were next to seated(through our party have been on stand-by for 40mins) they just dont get seated that fast. I explain to hostess what i saw and she said it was weird because again not how it works. She asks for names for that party at the table to see if they were on the list. It didnt appear. I explain further how this was unfair to the other stand-by parties who were "next" and she was nice to get to the bottom of it. Then I see the same gentleman who was rude eailer hes the manager.( context I work as a member of management in my company, I can tell the face of a person just done with a person and the shift). He proceeds to look me up and down with a dirty look, and a face of just annoyed and said in a rude tone of voice that he checked them in. That was clearly a lie because he wasn't in the front helping to seat people. With that he walked away. I felt so offended by the manager. After 2 hour wait we were seated. The staff that was helping us even agree that the manger was acting like an jerk. And with that I rate it like this because the manger was the only thing that made this experience bad. So I took off 3 stars. Never taking my family there again after...