K-TOWN Korean BBQ & Hot Pot — Restaurant in Indianapolis

I have been consistently eating here whenever I am in town for company training or company business. Went by myself in the early evening and had a 15-20 minute wait on a table, which is normal for KBBQ evening service.

After placing my first order, went to check out the cold bar. The one thing I noticed is the occasional housefly that would land on some of the open vegetables, but I was able to pick around the parts where the fly landed. One of my complaints is there was no bok choy, a vegetable I see in almost all KBBQ restaurants I visit around the US. I also noticed the burner in Table G2 took a long time to heat the soup broth I ordered.

First order partially arrived, however it was missing two items. Those items did arrive within five minutes of the first part of the order so I found that normal. The dinner experience went well, until I began to cook a package of shin ramen noodles. The server came by and asked if I was ordering "no more meats." I found that oddly specific, rather than asking if they could get anything else or if they could place another order for me, but I told them I planned on ordering more meats.

After placing another order, once again the order partially arrived, but this time the server did not check nor did the runner come back with the missing items. I called for the server and advised of the missing items. The server went back to check and came out with the missing items. It was at this point that the server began to consistently ask if I was going to order anything else, and it made me feel as if I was being rushed to finish my meal. This happened while I still had an hour left in my two-hour limit.

I placed one last order with the server. Once again, the runner came by with the order partially done. This time the server came back, saw that some items were missing, and then returned to the kitchen to retrieve the missing items. The server brought the items to the table, and then the runner came back to the table with another order of the missing items, and the quality of the missing items brought by the runner was vastly different from the ones brought by the server (slices were brittle and fell apart).

At this point, I was not happy with the experience and called for a manager. The manager came, and I explained my grievances to the experience: the inconsistent orders that had missing items, the frequent checkups by the server that felt more like I was being rushed out, and the poor quality of the missing food items that came out. I told the manager I felt I was being hurried out of the restaurant for another party, and I didn't appreciate the atmosphere. The manager apologized and offered a beverage out of compensation, which I accepted. Upon payment, the server apologized for their service and explained they wanted to make sure that they were ready to send orders on time. I explained to the server that the frequent check ups made me feel as if the restaurant wanted to rush me out for another table.

Overall, if you plan on dining solo, come to this place on a weekday, not a weekend. I have received better service and food quality during weekdays when it is not as busy. If you plan on dining with a group, come to this place on a weekend early to ensure you get your orders in full. It seems the servers and runners begin to fall behind and lose communication with the kitchen...

I came here a couple of nights ago for dinner with a friend. Neither of us had ever been to a Korean bbq restaurant before. We were really into trying it out. We were greeted and seated pretty quickly, which was great because when we had tried to eat here a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday there was a 45 min. wait. The staff that greeted us and sat us were polite. Everything started to take a hard turn after we made it to the table. We explained to the server that this was our first time for Korean bbq and his explanation was not helpful at all. We did go ahead and ordered both the bbq and hot pot. We were able to go through the "buffet" bar areas to get our ingredients for the hot pot and bbq. When we returned to our meat selections were there waiting on us. The server came over and showed us how to use the hotplate that is in the middle of the table to cook the bbq on. We began cooking our meats but was still waiting on our soup bases to be brought out for our hot pots. We waited for quite some time before our server came to check on us. At that point we were pretty irritated because we were finishing up our bbq and still did not have our hot pots. We tried to explain to him our frustration but I don't think he was understanding what we were trying to say. He did finally go to the kitchen and brought out our hotpots. My friend asked to talk to a manager to explain our frustration and point out that multiple tables around us that had been seated while we were eating already had all of the stuff they ordered. The first person to come to the table was a younger gal and again I don't think she was fully understanding what we were upset about. She smiled, said she was so sorry, and that she would talk to her manager. We said wait, you're not the manager? We asked for the manager already. Again she says she's so sorry and she walks away. A little bit later an older gentleman approached and asked us what was going on. We verified that he was the manager before we went through the entire thing again. We went through the whole thing about not getting our hot pots, poor service, food was not very good, etc. The manager apologized and said he was going to give us a discount and even gave us a hot sake at no charge. The gal that had been at our table previously brought us our check. Talk about sticker shock when I looked at that ticket!! $72 for some ok food, a pop, and a hot sake!!! They took off the charge for the hotpots and discounted the whole ticket 10%. Here's the kicker to the whole ordeal.....I GOT FOOD POISONING!!! Late that evening and into the next morning I was so sick. We wanted to love this place but with everything that we experienced, I will not be...

This place is legit! Had an amazing experience here that was way beyond our expectations.

Looking at the building/pictures I thought maybe this was a small mom and pop shop or something, but upon stepping inside it immediately reminded my wife and I of our experience going to one of the major yakiniku chains we loved while living in Japan.

Interior feels modern and cozy at the same time. We were a bit surprised when a robot came by to serve people boba!

Cost I felt was very reasonable and in line with what I used to have in Japan, very competitive with other restaurants in the area (at time of writing, $29 per person for all you can eat barbecue or hot pot, or $34 per person if you want both)

The service was also excellent, some of the most attentive and professional we have seen in a while. (Big shout out to our server Jose! Despite being busy he was super on top of everything, would come to check and notice things we might want before I even thought to ask, just all around seemed to be working really hard to be attentive and deliver a great experience)

Food was also great, meat was all very tender, nice variety of sauces to choose from, vegetables/lettuce etc. was all very fresh. Also just in general a good variety of cuts/marinades to choose from, we were able to try a bit of several items from the barbecue menu. Only minor quibble was that the dessert was so-so, but that's not really what you go to these places for anyway. Definitely looking forward to trying the hot pot next time!

As a side note, I had looked at some of the negative reviews before going, and afterwards I honestly have no clue where those people are coming from. It almost seems like they are getting review bombed by a Chinese competitor or something, a lot of them seem very strange and hard to imagine based on the experience we had.

For anyone saying portions are small, I question if they've ever been to Korean BBQ before or understand that they can order over and over. For anyone unaware, the general idea is you order several dishes you want to try, cook them on the table, and you ask them to bring you more if you want more. Individual portions are small so you can try a bunch of different things and not worry about over-ordering. If anyone thinks the portions are too small, I think that's more a problem with them not ordering enough, as again it's all you can eat...

Final note: Only real things I would recommend them improving are getting a website up and running, and trying to do something about the exterior to better convey what's inside! Some more/better options for dessert would also be nice but definitely not a...