BBQ 85 — Restaurant in Dublin

It's a fine restaurant if you read reviews beforehand on what to order.

Service: Somehow you get even less service than from a normal Chinese restaurant. You seat yourself and order using a QR code. A waiter brings you food, and later, the check.

Ambiance: Pretty quiet when I went at around 6PM on a Monday night. They played some old Cantonese music and also some 2000s pop songs.

Food: Everything that we ordered was good, with the flavor trending toward the sweeter end. Note that there are different Northern Chinese styles of the deep fried pork. The one that they make here is similar to tanghulu in that the crispiness comes from the crystallized sugar rather than from the batter. Skewers are alright, but the seasoning is a bit too sweet for me. I enjoyed the cold noodles a lot as I've never had them before. They are nice and chewy and seasoned well.

However, there are some questionable aspects of the restaurant that made me dock some stars. First, they have a promotion in place where you can post a review on various apps in exchange for discounts. In particular, if you post a review on a specific site, they will give you $10 off your meal. The promotion failed to mention that you need to be an influencer in order to receive the discount. Being misled like this left a bad taste in my mouth. Second, the menu is extremely diverse. Like suspiciously diverse. Supposedly this is a Northern Chinese bbq restaurant, so you'd expect skewers and Northern Chinese food. But they serve literally everything. From Shanghainese food to Taiwanese food to Cantonese food. And it's not just stir-fries like some Chinese restaurants with hundreds of menu items. This place has fried rice, multiple different regional styles of noodles, pancakes, dumplings, and more. They don't seem to have the staffing required to make so many types of dishes with different preparations - when I went it seemed like there was just the owner and 1-2 chefs. It really makes me suspect if everything I ate just came from a package that was popped into the oven/microwave/fryer for a bit. I mean, the food still tasted fine, but I can also reheat some frozen food at home and save a...

Parking in this complex can be a bit challenging during busy times. We went on a Saturday at lunch. The restaurant sign wasn’t obvious from the parking lot due to the angle. I only noticed the BBQ 85 sign walking towards the restaurant.

The restaurant is mostly self served. We sat down ourselves and scan the QR code for the menu using a phone. The order is placed online but there no need to pay first.

The food is brought out and the staff member was extremely friendly and polite. We found an item to be a bit too salty and they made a new one for us. Service is excellent. The food is a bit pricey but tasted great. We ordered a variety of bbq skewers, beef, lamb, chicken, tofu and vegetables. Overall a...

The bbq skewers were fantastic. They were the perfect blend of cumin and spices. It reminded me of the skewers I would get in Beijing. The Lanzhou noodles were flavorful and tasty as well. We also got the beef burrito which was beef, herbs and fresh veggies rolled up in a crispy scallion pancake and drizzled with a special sauce. They had Chinese karaoke playing on the a large screen but no one was singing. It was just playing in the background. I imagine it could be a good late night place and it was very family when we went. My family and I would...