Beque Holic — Restaurant in Gainesville

Pretty solid K-BBQ experience for Gainesville. The atmosphere is good with tall booths to give some privacy to diners. The decor is elegant, but not over done. Pretty standard for a mid-high end restaurant. Booths are comfortable (see below for why this is important). Staff is friendly and good at their jobs.

Beque Holic opened about the same time I arrived in Gainesville and I was excited to see something that reminded me of home. Our first experience at Beque Holic was mediocre. We opted for one of the AYCE options. We ordered our first round and were met with a mountain of food. This killed our experience as we were too full to try anything else after the first round. Also, our pallets had tired of the flavors after eating so much of the same things.

I had made an executive decision for a second visit on my birthday. We entertained the idea of getting one of the combination dinners (the one for 2), but didn't want the squid. We then came to the decision of getting the AYCE C. It's the most expensive, but offers the widest selection. This time, we asked that we started with smaller portions. This was the key to enjoying the AYCE here. With the smaller portions, we were able to sample a wide variety of dishes and our pallets did not tire of the flavors.

Guests are served in the traditional Korean BBQ fashion. There is banchan (a variety of vegetable/cold side dishes, mostly pickled, following in tradition) served with your meal. I love pickled veggies, so naturally, I love banchan... I can eat a ton of it. It's AYCE as well, so don't be shy. My partner loved the pot stickers. I believe she asked for 2 more orders after the first one came out. They are quite tasty. Of course there's kimchi. I'll eat a metric ton of kimchi.

The meats are of very good quality. Not the amazing stuff I've had in LA at Cho Sun Galbee, but that's to be expected. This is Gainesville, and Beque Holic is MUCH more inexpensive than CSG. The flavors are quite authentic for KBBQ. The sauces are accurate with the sweet/salty/savory/tangy balance. Cuts are well done and the pieces are uniform. This is important for cooking times. The only item on the menu that we didn't like was the NY Strip Steak. It's served as a full steak. It's quite difficult to cut and eat in this format. The meat was great, but it was the format of the dish that was a turn off. You get scissors, but it's difficult to cut a steak with scissors.

I'm not going to review each of the dishes we had because I can't remember due to the amount of different dishes we had. I will review the staff though. The staff is a very important aspect of the KBBQ experience especially if you are a first timer, which I suspect many living in Gainesville will be. The staff will advise you on how to cook your meats, what each banchan dish is and, maintain your cooking surface. The staff at Beque Holic is very knowledgeable and attentive. They are willing to impart the best of their knowledge on guests. This will make anyone's visit (first time or otherwise) a very pleasant experience.

I would encourage anyone who likes meat to try this. If it's your first time with a KBBQ experience, don't be hesitant to tell the staff. They will make sure your experience is enjoyable. I would advise all guests to get the AYCE C, especially first timers. Bring a big appetite, ask for small portions and, try as much as you can. Don't be afraid to ask the staff about the cooking procedures for each dish. Again, I cannot stress this enough, as you will be cooking your own food. This goes double for first timers. You don't want to mess up and miss out on a wonderful dish because you cooked it for 2 minutes too long. Also, ask for grill changes. If the grill is starting to build up some caked on sugars and sauces, ask for a new one. Also, if you do this right, plan to stay for a while as you will be happily cooking and eating for a good amount of time. If you worry about smelling like kbbq after, you won't. The restaurant utilizes a downdraft system, so no smoke ever rises off the table cooker.

So...

Last night was the second time I have been to this restaurant. I have several complains about this restaurant listed below. The first time was not bad, the atmosphere is nice and the meats were pretty good, but the price for what you get is just WAY too high! If you want the ALL You Can Eat (AYCE) option with bulgogi, which of course is an important Korean Dish, you can't get the $23.95 option but must pay $28.95.

Next issue: you cannot get the AYCE option unless EVERYONE in the group chooses the EXACT same option. What if some people in the group don't have a lot of money to spend, but ONE or two do and they want the AYCE option! Too bad. I understand their fear of people ordering the AYCE and then sharing as that is stealing I suppose, but with EVERY employee there looking like a CIA agent wearing an ear device to communicate amongst themselves, you would think someone would see someone cheating the system and then kindly ask them to not continue, or charge them a sharing fee.

Next issue: the first round of meats had a decent portion, but every round after that had half the size so you had to keep trying to get the attention of the server, which in our case last night was a real challenge to do.

Next issue: The supposed Korean side dishes were TERRIBLE! They give you this barely visible dish of kimchi, which should be a pretty decent size bowl for FOUR people. These were the absolute worst side dishes I have ever eaten for Korean food and anything that came from the back, like soup or dumplings was lukewarm.

Next issue: I had a nice LONG piece of hair in the bulgogi that you could not see until I put it in my mouth. I did not say anything as my son did not want me to embarrass him.

Final issue: at the end of the night, my son happened to look down and said there is water all over the floor under our table by the grill and I was stepping in it (with sandals) but didn't feel it under my shoes. I thought it looked like oil so reached down and touched it and yes, it was oily and black. I told the waiter and he said he would get the manager. Well, we waited for a good 10 min and no manager so I asked someone else to send the manager over. I showed him the issue and he said was not oil from the cooking table but was "water from a leaky pipe and the color was not black from the oil, but was from RUST" on the pipes! Oh, so you knew about the issue and had not fixed it before a customer came in? Nice. My sandals were ruined and ended up with a sticky, oily black substance on my feet I had to scrub 3 times when I got home to get it off.

Did the manager offer any compensation? Of course not. Just that he would clean it up after we left. I will never be going back and will go to Orlando or Tampa for MUCH BETTER Korean food with amazing side dishes and other menu options. This place doesn't even offer Japche or Korean soups.

Don't bother going unless you have a ton of money to spend and EVERYONE wants...

Three and a half hours for all "all you can eat" gets you two orders of meat, two drinks, no refill on sides or drinks, and you won't your waiter again after he drops off your drinks. Very good meat, garbage service, garbage management.

Here's what happened: We waited an hour to be seated, not really a problem since it was busy. We were seated at 8:45 and our waiter took our order (the AYCE - B option) and, about 5 minutes later, returned with our drinks and side dishes and first order of meat. We were not given utensils, no big deal, he'll be right back, right? No, I had to get up and find another server, no idea where they were all hiding, to ask for chopsticks, also asked for a fork that never materialized from the ether. Next we cooked our food and ate what we thought would be the first of several orders of various meats. At about 9:12 we were ready to start ordering more. Our original server never returned, nor did anyone else stop by or come to our table when I attempted to flag them down. The hostess flat out looked me in the eye as I was waving at her and she stopped and walked the other way. We waited for our server to return. We waited some more. Then, we waited some more. Around 9:30 another server walked by and said it was last call for meat and if we wanted anything else. In a panicked, and still hungry, state of being, we ordered three more meats and hoped to possible order another round as soon as those were out. We played the waiting game once more. At 9:50 the three meats we ordered were finally delivered. Still, our server had yet to return to our table, yet he made it to two others across the restaurant. He was very attentive to these Asian tables and not to the white folk he started with, I am hoping this is a coincidence and not something more telling about this restaurant or their staff. A little after ten we were finished, angry and ready to leave. Still, no one came by our table. So we went back to playing the waiting game. Finally at 10:20 another waitress came by the table and dropped off our check. We paid, left, and will not be returning. We used to go here once or twice a month, it is very sad to see they have really fallen down in quality of service. There is no excuse for the lack of attentiveness by the waitstaff, to the point of actively ignoring you. Asking $30 per person to only try 6 out of 17 items is ridiculous. It is not worth it. Go...