Stadium Camellia Restaurant — Restaurant in Honolulu

Stadium Camelia is a Korean Restaurant that offers an all you can eat buffet. This is an updated review from the glowing review I posted 2 years. Covid has caused lot of changes and dropped my original 5 star rating down to 2 stars. We were so disappointed by our experience this time that I didn't even feel like bothering to review again. However, my old pictures and review are now irrelevant.

First of all, patrons get only 90 minutes to cook their food before the burner is turned off. It used to be 2 hours. Secondly, the staff brings you your food. You don't get to choose anymore. Also, the kalbi is no longer on the selection of uncooked meat. You have to order a plate lunch or dinner or a side, I believe if you want kalbi. There is NO raw seafoods to choose from and the dessert choices are just Samurai ice cream, Jello, or orange slices. There used to be way more.

The vegetable salad is only lettuce with an overpowering spicy dressing that kills your taste buds. Don't order it unless you like spicy dressing. Other vegetable choices are green bell peppers or round onions

You are required to order 4 meat choices from the very start but may double up or order 3 or 4 times a serving size if you only want one type of meat. We liked the beef brisket and BBQ beef the most. The beansprouts and mandu are very good also.

The service is excellent and deserves at least 4 to 5 stars. Our waiter was Jonah and he was very attentive. If only the food was as good I would rate higher. I guess because we remember how this restaurant used to be 2 years ago anything less is disappointing.

I didn't take photos of the menu or prices but you can find all that information on their website. Seniors and military get discounts but I was so distracted by our experience that I forgot to ask for the discount. We all agreed we won't be...

Needed to find a new AYCE kbbq place outside of town, and boy does Stadium Camellia not disappoint! We arrived around 545p on a Sunday and needed to wait about 15 mins for a party of 2. Even with an earlier dinner time, the restaurant was packed! Recommend calling in to make a reservation. On just sitting and waiting, we saw 3 servers who were running around taking orders, serving, replace grills, non-stop. Even the owners pitched in here and there to turn around tables or bring out food ingredients. Roomy space with lots of ceiling vents to make it less smoky.

On to the food - the quality of the meats were pretty good. My favorite was the kalbi and garlic pork belly (wowowow was it garlicky 😁, sorry for my breath afterwards lol). The servers weren't shy with the portion sizes or checkin in to see if we wanted to place more orders in. For pupus, we had the karaage, mandoo, japchae, and kimchi stew which were all pretty good and came out nice and hot. Next time I'll try some of the fried calamari, as lots of tables had that.

Banchan was placed at the table once seated and were pretty good (and refillable). Be sure to ask for raw garlic and jalapeños to throw on the grill. The closing dessert of samurai blue vanilla ice cream, although super full at that point, was a great close to the meal.

What really won me over was how sharp the scissors were to cut up the meats. It's the little things, cause my pet peeve is when you get blunt scissors that you have to hack through and don't cut - these snipped so smoothly. One con is that they don't serve single diners.

Overall looking forward to our next visit. They have some specials, like birthday, seniors, and military on...

Place was busy on Saturday evening but got seated within 3 mins as there’s only 2 of us and it was before the dinner rush hour. Service was decent as nobody greeted us when we came in and people just kinda looked at us but maybe it was just busy, 4 stars for the service because our server sean only came back twice to either take our order and that’s it, not even checked on us or refilled our water or extra napkins… got saved by another server that was very nice and patient with us who checked on us often offering we wanted more meats or needed anything else. Other than that the food was great! Well seasoned meats and great cuts of meats that are available all day for the weekend. No need the sauce unless you really wanted that yum yum! 😆 the sides were huge portions, we got the calamari and mandoo both were good and came out really fast as we were very hungry after being at the beach all day. Also the japchae was very good and flavorful. Everything was good with their meats and sides. Also got some soup which was very good to pair with the rice and the lettuce that are FREE! With no charge compared to other places that charge you extra for veggies!! Like what?! It should be free and unlimited lol 🙄 foods and meats came out quickly and orderly, and got to cooking right away! Just didn’t like the vent smoke seems like to wasn’t working cuz the place was a bit Smokey and the smoke stayed in our faces for a while, kinda hard to eat and breathe at the same time 😂 but overall a good experience first time at camelias, with reasonable amount for the food you can get. Service was ok as i mentioned above, but the food was good so it makes up for it just except for...