iWON Korean BBQ & Hot Pot — Restaurant in College Station

TL;DR average overpriced Korean bbq place with bad management and service. Go somewhere else. The comment by the owners is not true, and if you browse bad reviews you will find that “poor communication” and “bad management” are the consistent theme.

I’ll start by saying we have been to several Korean BBQ places and we know how the hot pot and BBQ options work. The food in this place is average, the service was horrible and their management needs to work on their customer service skills. I’ll explain below.

This place was new to us and the server FAILED to explain how theirs works. The bar has fruit, pastries and other items that are not included if you go with BBQ option. From our experience from other places, the bar food was open to EVERYONE. One of our members grabbed some shrimp and oysters from the bar. The server came and told a half empty table not to grab them, but some other members had already gone to grab food and other members were not present. I’m sure the restaurant will respond with “they told us multiple times” but it was only once and to an empty table. Good servers should communicate this at the beginning when everyone is at the table. We were now worried about grabbing anything from the bar since we didn’t know what was allowed.

A member that was not present came back with bar food. Management got upset and the manager (asian looking guy) came and told us in a disrespectful manner that since we don’t follow instructions we are getting charged. The way he talked down on us, pretty much that we are liars, was very unprofessional and I was able to capture a video of it that I won’t post since kids are shown. We had no problem paying for our food, and the extra but the way they treated us was unprofessional. They couldn’t give us drink refills since no one was present but they were pretty good at watching our behavior at the bar??

After that the server maybe came 1 or 2 to our table. We had to look for her if we wanted more food, if we wanted drinks, or even pay for our food. I was paying attention to other servers and you have very good servers that were amazing with their tables. Unfortunately our waitress was bad and you should probably provide some training. I had to stand up, walk to look for her around the restaurant and ask if I could grab fruit from the bar since we didn’t know what was okay and what not. She later informed me that fruit and pastries were included but not anything else. That explanation at the beginning and maybe some freaking labels on your bar will be helpful. You have the fruit that is available for everyone next to the stuff that isn’t and there is no SIGN explaining this. We paid, explained our experience and remove the tip from the bill. The manager was nearby listening to the story and NEVER even looked at us or did anything that might show good customer skills.

You need to improve your practices and customer service skills. And yes, please share your contact information as I’ll like to have a conversation with you. Looking...

Never been to a Korean BBQ All You Can Eat (AYCE)?

First, so happy there is one in CSTAT as my kids love k bbq!!!

This is similar to Gen BBQ in Houston or Dallas areas but a smaller scale.

Dress in clothes you don't care that will get smelly (as in smells like bbq)... your hair may too! So plan accordingly to change or after activities

First, it's $32/per person (dinner) for ALL you can eat- yes, ALL you CAN eat. They have different prices for lunch and kids. Everyone in party has to partake (no water only visitors). You usually order in rounds of 3 meats but IWON lets you order as much as you want per round. *note: if you waste food- they charge you $10 per plate so I always err on side of caution and order more as needed. No need to hoard!

Meats we liked: Kalbi (short rib), brisket, beef belly, finger ribs, pork jowl (cheek- yes, it's so good), pork belly (uncured bacon), scallops and salmon. The thin meats will arrive frozen (bc that's how they have to slice it but cooks super fast). The pork cheek and belly goes really great sesame oil with salt/pepper. Dont forget to order rice, veggies such as garlic, mushroom and onion! And wrap in lettuce - with rice and meat! Make sure you cook the meat accordingly to avoid undercooked meats. (The bulgogi meat slices were a little too thick for our preference, but we didn’t try other thicker meats).

Note: this is not a place for vegans- there is not a selection really for vegans. But, for pescatarians- however, yes- you can enjoy and have similar experience. Sorry, you really have to eat meat to fully enjoy.

There is a cool sauce bar- try them! Dip your meats in it. They don't have banchan (small dishes) yet, but the dumplings were good and they have kimchi, seaweed salad, pickled radish and bean sprout salad.

Once you are almost done with first round, you hail your waitperson and order round 2. We did 4-5 rounds! And yes, you cook your own meats in the table grill with tongs and scissors to cut meat smaller pieces. Almost like indoor campfire. If the exhaust vent is working - there is no smoke- sometimes on rare occasion, someone's vent isn't on and causes the whole restaurant to be smoky.

We didn't try the hotpot (for $5/per person extra) option but that's for next time! But the veggies and meats for hotpot is at the bar.

This is very popular and dining experience take about an hour- so needless to say- the wait times can be long during peak times. We arrived at 4:15pm to avoid peak times and got great service from KC and we will definitely be back!

All in all, note that they just opened weeks ago and still in growing pains so please be patient and they do listen and read reviews! We highly recommend them and we be dining here for every visit!!!

(Also if you think this is $$$$ pricey, it is not! If you come from the big city- it's easily $50/pp!) try it! It's super...

My husband and I had a good time. The food was decent. Service was decent. College station definitely needed something like this.

However, we were disappointed by the lack of banchan. This is generally standard with Korean. Nothing was offered in the way of a side (like kimchi or Oi Muchim) to go with the Korean BBQ other than a bowl of rice. We were also disappointed that we were seated at a table with a semi dirty grill plate and allowed to eat off of it. We didn't catch it until the server quickly swapped it out while we were cooking our first round. This was never acknowledged by the server- we would have appreciated it if the mistake was owned and apologized for. Instead it made us feel a little weird and like she was covering up for her mistake and trying to get one by us without noticing. Other than this one thing, our server was wonderful. The safest thing to do would have been to let us know what was up and to allow us to start fresh with new meats on a new grill in case we had any kind of allergies or reasons we don't eat certain meats (we don't, thankfully).

Cooking on our grill was extremely slow and eventually ceased all together due to our table malfunctioning after the first grill plate was swapped. It took about 10 to 15 minutes to cook some pork belly. Once the issue was brought up (we thought maybe the heat was turned down, so we were patient before saying anything), we were promptly moved and the second table functioned. The food was delicious.

I would have given five stars despite all of this, but the icecream was served in a plastic container with a plastic spoon. For the price of dinner, it just felt extremely cheap and it was kind of a disappointment cherry on top for me. The additional charge for Green Tea ice cream also felt almost offensive considering if you go out to a place like this in Houston, the ice cream is included. Same for another restaurant in the area that does AYCE Asian Cuisine. I had been planning to spend that extra $2 until I received the ice cream with the plastic spoon in a little plastic container (like you're a kid at a birthday party). Even at the cheapest Chinese buffets I've dined at that offered icecream, it was either self service in a freezer or soft serve machine or served in a small glass bowl with a real spoon.

There was no real apology or acknowledgement from a manager about the table issues. At the time we were just ready to leave at the end, but after a few days of thinking on the experience, I went ahead and decided to leave a review.

Overall, it was a very neutral experience. This place has the potential to be amazing and I would love to see it continue to grow...