MAAX Asian BBQ & Hot Pots — Restaurant in Elk Grove Township

This review is strictly on the lack of business professionalism and lack of customer experience. It is non-food related so scroll on if you’re looking for a food review. But if you want the deets on their lack of business professionalism, please, read on.

To the community: BUYER BEWARE If you’re going to make any kind of reservations here whether it be over phone or web (Google or OpenTable) then you best BE AWARE that on their supposedly “busy days”, they will start their “2 hour policy” mandate at THE TIME of your reservation even before you arrived on site and have been seated at your table. So yes, don’t count on getting the full 2 hours for your money, count on less than that.

The situation: We arrived late to our 5:45 PM dinner reservation. Unfortunately, we hit traffic and we had 3 others coming who were also coming later due to traffic and longer distance. We checked in 10-15 min late and were told we would not be seated until the whole party gets here (understandable). BUT, then we were told “Also, your 2 hour time limit has started, and it started at 5:45 PM”

What??! We were dumbfounded. So the clock was ticking before we even got there and now it will tick as we sat and wait for the rest of our party?? We’ve never heard of a more absurd business practice! Timers first all of all at any BBQ places we’ve been to start AFTER you sat down at the table and the server has gone through all the options and you start ordering.

NO ONE mentioned this over the phone when we called earlier until we got there in person. They also added, “this is for busy days”. Ah okay, so when it’s busy, you aim to take advantage of the paying customers even more. You want to discount my time but not discount my bill. I would pay the same to get less because you’re busy and in demand. Gotcha, loud and clear.

So this business runs itself jam-packed like an airline who oversold their seating capacity. I guess they don’t do an adjustment of reservations vs walk-ins. I guess they run their food service like it’s a show-time and the show starts on time whether you’re there or not and the food is like a performance that started and we just need to deal with less time while paying the same price.

Now we weren’t unreasonable. We asked to be moved down the waiting list, that they can go ahead and give our slot to someone else and we were willing to wait and have a new timer start at a later time after we were all present and can be seated. Nope, that wasn’t an option.

We asked for solutions and they said they could seat us now, start the clock and when our remaining party arrives, those people will have less time. Sure, let me rush half of my party who will pay the same price per person as me and tell them to eat FASTER when they get here. Like No. We’re not doing that.

So all of this is… you mean to tell me, you guys opened a business restaurant without any consideration for 1) reservations and 2) walk-ins flexibility. Is this serious? What restaurant don’t experience reservation cancellations? What will you do if you get a cancellation and new walk-ins if it’s not going fit right into your booking slot by the :15 of an hour? Are you going to turn that group away, say “sorry”, and just eat the cost of the remaining slot and lose money?? Come on, I wasn’t born yesterday.

And finally, to top it all of — it is ultimately our experience with a condescending Asian male manager who not only was rude, but talked over me (and I’m an Asian female) and essentially wanted to talk to ONLY to my husband which felt, honestly, very sexist. Sir, it’s 2025 and I’m not a concubine.

Needless to say, we walked our party of 8 out and took our business and money elsewhere, to Galaxy Hotpot & BBQ that’s 12 minutes away and had the most delicious meal and had amazing customer service.

Honestly, I’m being generous to give 2/5 stars to this place because I haven’t tasted the foods but already, it already left a bitter taste in my mouth as we left. NO THANK YOU.

Keep your policy, keep your ticking clock. Customers deserve...

We have been here before and our past experience was five stars.

However our latest experience is a one star based on how our reservation was handled, so this review reflects that.

To disclose:

1. We were late to the reservation. Yes, this was because something happened to our party, but we did call ahead and were upfront about what happened.

2. We had some folks bail out with a situation, which is why we were late to the reservation to begin with.

3. We could have done better and let them know our party was short, so lesson learned there.

What we didn’t like, was the the person at the front desk almost seemed like he was blaming us for being late (despite the fact that we called ahead to let them know we were running late and were told, “no worries, see you soon!”), and, rather than try to accommodate us, informed us that we would have to go back to the very end of the line by going on the waitlist.

I’ve been in this situation a few times with other restaurants, and they do their very best to accommodate a guest with a reservation, normally by putting them AT THE FRONT of the waiting list instead of basically invalidating the reservation by asking us to go to the BACK of the waitlist as if we had no reservation at all!

On top of that, the individual displayed zero empathy, was almost laughing at us, and generally very DGAF about it.

Further, no apology was made, mostly pointing to that it was our problem and our fault for being late.

I wasn’t thrilled, obviously, at being treated as such, and so we walked out with an expletive (which I regret), so not our best hour, but far from our best experience.

Your staff needs more training in empathy. I’ve also seen this before, and you can’t put someone that possesses no empathy in a customer facing position.

Even if you try and train someone with no empathy, they’ll struggle with it because they just don’t have it in them.

Just don’t do it.

The front desk needs a “people person”, because you deal with people all day long.

The staff also needs more training, as simply making a small accommodation to move us closer to the front of the waitlist (which we would have understood), or, at minimum, a statement like “we’re really sorry, we tried our best to accommodate you but couldn’t” would have gone a long way toward keeping the peace.

Don’t put assholes in customer facing positions and train your team better when handling customers and providing other options for handling late reservations (this is pretty basic for most...

We made reservations to celebrate a late Mother’s Day. Our reservation for 4 was for 6pm. We arrived at 5:55pm. We were seated at 6:10pm in a back corner and then forgotten. We did attempt to use the iPad at the table but there’s a code, it seems a waitress needs to check you in before you can order. After 15 minutes of no server we flagged down someone else’s waiter to get service. We ordered drinks and 3 plates of meat. We never saw our waitress again till the check. 30 minutes after we ordered, we went to the bar ourselves to try to get our drinks as we saw 2 of the 4 sitting there. We were told they didn’t have a bar tender tonight (It’s Saturday, 17th, 7pm….) we got our drinks 10 minute later. At 7:05pm we were brought a single plate of meat, the food runner seemed confused as we didn’t have our soup yet. Meanwhile, we’ve watched SEVEN other tables be seated and served multiple platters of meat. We still had a single meat plate which is a serving for one. And some of the tables had parties twice our size. At 7:20pm - I found a manager and let our complaints be known. We were finally served food at 7:25pm and told not to worry about the 2 hour table limit 🙄 he explained it’s their soft open and he’d give a discount. The meals were $37 a person, the drinks about $18 a person. We obviously only got one drink each given the service. The manager discounted a drink ($20) for our troubles… the bill was over $200 and my mother spent her Mother’s Day celebration hungry, angry, and confused. This was her first experience with hot pot. We obviously won’t be returning and encourage the staff the address the issues before their “grand opening”.

Issues to address; Why make a reservation if it’s still going to be 90 minutes to eat ? There’s no pricing anywhere till the check comes. No one explained how the restaurant worked - ipad, etc. Forgetting patrons. Clearly understaffed. Taking too many reservations at one time. Far from ready for a...