KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot — Restaurant in East Brunswick Township

This place is walk-in only, but we got a seat within 10 minutes on a Saturday night. Food selection is VAST. Anything you could think of eating at a typical restaurant is on the menu. Excellent choice of options. Bar is good too, has a pretty decent selection of your classic and Korean/Asian drinks. Our server was awful. When we sat down, he said hello and handed us a tablet. No introduction, no guidance, nothing. He even forgot to put the BBQ on. As we ate, we noticed the soup bases weren't getting hot and tried several times to flag the guy down for help. He showed us the button to turn it on. I'm not sure if we were supposed to just know this as the button is directly attached to the hot plate and isn't raised. We didn't know it was a touch screen like button. At one point I ordered 3 refills of my soda because the guy was never around and paid minimal attention to his tables. When he did come by, he wouldn't make eye contact woth any if his tables, just walk past. At one point we had to ask a different server for assistance with utensils as they only put chopsticks, and I believe a spoon on the table. Reading other reviews, it seems service there is a pretty consistent pain point, but I went in figuring they were just difficult customers or they went in on a bad night. Guess we're also difficult customers, and it must have been a bad night lol. There's a sauce bar with a really large selection of sauces and things to add into the sauces. Would be nice if they stirred it every so often at minimum because the sediment and film on top of a lot of the sauces show they sit all day and likely aren't fresh. Don't get the crab legs, they've been sitting out all day, and the meat inside had dehydrated. They didn't offer crab crackers, at least from what we could tell, so pinching open the legs with your fingers to find a tiny sliver of meat is a pain. Food was great once you figured it out/your server told you how everything works. We got beef, spicy salmon, quail eggs, spam, veggies, shrimp, all of it. So good. Soup bases were decent, too. I believe on their website, they had pictures of pots with two soup bases separated by an S-shaped piece of metal. So we ordered 5 bases thinking we'd receive one full pot of 1 sauce and two pots with 2 separated bases. No, we got 5 pots of soup lol. This was unfortunate and not sure if we should have clarified what we wanted, but the guy gave us a tablet and ran, no explanation. Unfortunate as we didn't get to use two of the bases and wasted them. Everything was too hot and cumbersome to swap safely and efficiently. Either way, we all ate until we were full and had nothing negative to say about the food itself. On a final note, dress lightly. You'll be sweating with all the steam and the hot grill. Especially if you're fat like me, but even my girlfriend of healthy weight and my friend who's basically a stick started sweating by the...

My family and I had a horrible experience at this restaurant. The BBQ experience was horrendous. The waiter put the steaks on the grill, and then disappeared for at least 20 minutes. We noticed that the steaks weren't really cooking that whole time. A waitress walked by, so I got her attention to let her know our grill wasn't working. She stopped, looked at it and said, "Well, it's on high” and walked away. 5 minutes later, our waiter came back and we pointed to the steaks on the grill which now looked rubbery. (Picture attached) He tried cutting up the steaks to see if it would cook faster, but it still didn’t work. Unfortunately, he disappeared again, so I went to look for a manager. I showed the manager what was going on, and he talked to me like I was inconveniencing him. I asked to move tables since by now almost an hour had passed since we first started cooking the steaks. Note that all the other RAW MEAT to be cooked was sitting on the table as well waiting to be cooked. We were moved to another table and as the waiter was about to put the same steaks on the grill, we asked for new ones. He brought them out and the grill seemed to work for the 1st minute. As soon as he left the table again, the grill stopped working. After about 10 minutes, he came back and saw that the grill stopped working again. Obviously, we were very frustrated. He just apologized and asked if we wanted the rest of the meat to be cooked in the kitchen. We said sure, but asked him if it was safe to eat the meat that had been sitting for 1½ hours. Maybe we should get fresh meat. He said, “No, it’s fine” and took 2 of the plates of meat back to the kitchen to cook. (Pork Ribs and Bulgogi) About 10 minutes went by, he brought that back and took another 2 plates until most of it was gone. We told him not to bother with the last 3 plates because the food he brought back was ½ cooked and not edible. (Pictured) Over 2 hours passed already and we still didn’t get to eat the BBQ. We said forget it, just give us the check. He gave us the full check. No discount at all. I called him back and said, you know exactly what we went through. This is not acceptable. He said, I know, let me see what the manager can do for you. He came back with the check and we saw that the manager gave us a 10% discount. (Pictured) UNACCEPTABLE! The manager (I think his name was Kevin) knew exactly what happened to our table. He obviously didn't care. We didn’t squabble over the check. We just paid it and still tipped the waiter since it wasn’t really his fault. As we handed him the tip and went to leave, he said I’m really sorry for your terrible experience here....

UPDATE IT'S BEEN 6 MONTHS AND NO REPLY TO THIS REVIEW. EVEN THOUGH THEIR ARE MANY REVIEWS, THE OWNER SEEMS TO IGNORE THIS ONE. NOT EVEN AN APOLOGY.

RECENTLY VISITED THIS LOCATION AGAIN DUE TO SOME FAMILY MEMBERS WANTING TO GO OUT AND DINE.

Here is a brand new review. (P.S. this is a good one)

Some of my family members wanted to go out and get Korean BBQ. I mentioned to them about my previous experience from this HORRIBLE location. Even though it may be the same chain the one on Route 22 is much better.

During this new visit, I wanted to make sure I documented everything I noticed. Although I will say this, our server was at least prompt with her guests. The first things I noticed that the floors were still slippery. Our table was greasy and not properly cleaned, out booth had missing tile and food delivery was extremely slow, our portions would be delivered but no soup base to cook. We had to ask several times when it would be delivered and when it did arrive. We mentioned which ones we order and still got it wrong.

But here's the messed up part. Even though it is summer and hot, I'm sure this location had the AC on. One thing I did notice was a staff member constantly wiping the ceiling from condensation over peoples tables! How does that make sense? Dust and disgusting water possibly falling on peoples food. I can assure you that if that person did it to our table I will not be pleased. This is location has very poor management and staff not properly trained.

Still a very bad experience. Let's see if management will respond to this one.

PREVIOUS VISIT Last week paid a visit to this location and dined with about 15 other people. Upon leaving the cleaning crew mopped the floors on the way out to the exit and on my way out I slipped and fell to the ground and slammed my knee which caused bruising and other pain on my legs. The people from my party were able to assist me up and made sure that I was okay and able to walk.

However, this is where it gets interesting. Upon leaving there were several staff members at the hostess desk either having a conversation or closing up for the night. After getting up from the ground NOT ONE, NOT ONE person from the staff came over to see if I was okay and if I needed any other assistance. Lacking empathy and compassion for someone who got injured at your location.

As of now I am not requesting for any handouts or pursuing legal action. What I would like is proper training for staff members to show a little empathy and compassion for someone who just injured themselves due to the negligence of the...