KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot — Restaurant in Columbia

Me, my friend and my friend's mom went here yesterday. This was one of the worst over all restaurant experiences we have all had.

My friend and her mom arrived 15 minutes before me. They were immediately taken to a table and asked what they wanted to order. They had not even had a chance to grab the menu and non of us had even been there before. They tell the server that they are waiting for someone and wanted to wait. It was only at that point that the server told them there is a 2 hour time limit from the moment you sit down. So by the time I get there, they already had a bunch of food on the table and some of it cooked due to the time restraint. Why was this not mentioned BEFORE being seated?

When I arrived, I didn't even have a chance to fully sit down before being asked what I wanted. I said I needed a menu bc I had never been there and told her I wanted just a water while i looked. Within the 2 minutes that she went to go get my water and brought it back, she was once again asking you what I wanted. I told her I hadn't even had a chance to look at the menu. The third time she came back within a couple of minutes, I just put the menu down and told her I wasn't going to order anything and I'm just going to have what is on the table. I couldn't even have enough time to look over everything.

The food was atrocious. I've been to other restaurants that are like this, and I actually enjoy cooking the food myself. It's fun! It's a neat experience. Most of the meats had some gross kind of old and odd flavor to them. The bacon that we got was a nasty brown color like it had been sitting out in the open. The only thing that was good was the raw pineapple. They kept interrupting us every 10-15 minutes and making us rush to take all the food off the grill so they could put a new grill on. Why couldn't they have waited for us to finish cooking what we had on there? those grills also got disgusting within a couple minutes of use. There were also these large slices of raw potato (I believe it was potato. They didn't bother telling us what everything was) that never cooked. They were on that grill for the recommended time and then some. They never cooked, just charred. Even trying it raw it just tasted... off.

We left half of the food on the table because of how bad it tasted. Server came over and asked if we were ready for the check and I decided to speak up. She sent a manager over even after we said that wasn't necessary, we simply wanted to share our experience and disappointment. We were looking for anything extra.

Manager comes over and apologizes about the experience and we just go over all the issues with him. He then says "things work a little differently here and I know that it's odd with the raw meats and having to cook." Which is honestly hilarious and a tad insulting, because I'm fully capable of cooking food for myself. So we're the other two grown women with me. Which I told him that exactly and said cooking it ourselves was not the issue. We are fully capable of cooking food. We've been to restaurants like this before and this food was just awful.

He ended up taking one of the meals off. Very nice of him to do, but we absolutely won't be back. We actually went across the street to somewhere else to eat.

It also looked like there were 15+ people on staff just... standing around. A group of kitchen staff were just hanging on the booths in the back, staring at everyone. When the manager came to our table, everyone came out of the back and just watch. That's inappropriate, unprofessional and made all of us very uncomfortable. As if the experience wasn't awful enough.

Im also interested in the fact that I didn't actually order anything due to being rushed and I just nibbled on what my 2 friends order. So no extra food was ordered, but we were originally going to be charged for 3 full meals.

We will absolutely not be back, especially after all of us had very upset stomachs...

This was our first visit to a restaurant like this and it was a bit overwhelming to say the least. My suggestion would be to do your research before going to this type of restaurant as one of the reasons for the loss of stars for service and atmosphere is this restaurant puts you under a clock for eating. You have a 2 hour time limit from the time you enter to be seated to order, receive, cook your food at the table and make your own sauces and try not to scald all the taste buds off your tongue. The server handed us a menu which has a ton of options on it, and did explain that you have to pick your soup base (If you did the pot option) and then pick all the ingredients to go in it, which there were a lot of. What we didn't understand was that you are not ordering ingredients just for yourself, but for everyone at the table. So that is where the confusion began. The food is not bad but you have to cook it at your table. You add everything you want to your pot and wait for it to cook then try and eat it. This was kind of trial and error and since you fix it right there the soup is scalding hot, hence the warning about burning your taste buds off. You create your own sauces if you have any idea what sauces you would want. The sauce bar has lots of options so you can come up with your own concoctions or follow a recipe. The problem with this is there is a line of people all trying to do their sauces and you are trying to follow a recipe by reading it with the ingredients you need spread all over the bar so you have to keep going back and forth cutting in on other people to either get to the ingredients you need or to look back at the recipe. We finally got the gist of how things operated, and ate our food (which we had a group of 5), went ahead and paid the bill when most of us had finished eating and then while 1 person was still eating, a gentleman comes to our table and asks us if we have already cashed out, to which we replied yes and he begins to tell us that well unfortunately our time has cashed out too, we had reached our 2 hour time limit and we would have to come back tomorrow. So basically shovel what you got in your mouth and get out. If we had all just been hanging out chatting while other people were waiting on a table, I would understand, but there were plenty of tables open and no one waiting. We all felt this was a little rude and I doubt that we will be returning to this particular establishment. BTW, there is also a waste food charge of $13.99lb if you leave too much food at the table which I understand. My only problem with that is, if I run out of time and they tell us we have to leave, do they still charge us for not eating the food they...

I had the most dreadful experience at this restaurant, and I feel compelled to share it to save others from enduring the same ordeal. From start to finish, it was not a good experience. Firstly, let's talk about the seating. Despite the fact that our initial table was freezing cold, and my mother, who suffers from severe knee and stomach issues, was clearly uncomfortable, the waiter refused to let us switch to a warmer spot. We even pointed out empty tables in a warmer corner, but were told that they were reserved for larger parties. She insisted that she turn up the heat on our tables but instead of addressing our concerns immediately, the waiter took orders from other tables first before we reminded her the third time. But the problems didn't stop there. When we asked a waiter for a simple request like a napkin, we were met with an appalling attitude, being told that he wasn't assigned to our table and therefore couldn't assist us. Talk about customer service! Now onto the billing fiasco. Imagine our shock when we received a bill totaling $101 instead of the $60 we were expecting. Apparently, because it was a holiday, they decided to apply dinner prices all day long without informing us beforehand. This arbitrary price hike was completely unjustified, especially considering we didn't even order from the dinner menu. When we asked to speak to the manager about this discrepancy, we were met with incompetence. Not only did he fail to provide any valid explanation for the surprise charges, but he also had the audacity to claim there should have been signs indicating the holiday pricing, which there weren't. And to top it off, he confessed he didn't even know how to adjust the bill because he couldn't work the machine. What kind of manager doesn't know how to perform basic tasks? Despite our protests and threats to report this appalling behavior, all we received was a half-hearted apology, no adjustment to our bill, and the audacity to ask if we wanted anything to-go for additional money. It's clear that this restaurant values profit over customer satisfaction and lacks basic professionalism at every level. Save yourself the headache and avoid this establishment at all costs. It's not worth the hassle, the poor service, or the...