Gen Korean BBQ House — Restaurant in Jacksonville

Went here with some friends this past weekend. We've had a LOT of Korean BBQ in the past but it was our first time at this restaurant. One of our party cannot eat beef specifically, so for our first order we requested a hawaiian bacon. A Hawaiian beef was brought out. It looked off, so we asked and only after we asked were we told of the mistake. This could have been a hospital inducing event for our party member that cannot have beef if we hadn't realized. The server told us it was an all you can eat restaurant so we could simply order hawaiian bacon again and it'd be brought out. No apology. The bathroom was across the restaurant from our table and it was extremely slippery. I'm not sure if the floors were completely unclean or if they HAD been cleaned but not decreased. On my way back from the bathroom a rude and inconsiderate patron stuck his foot across the entire walkway abruptly (that part isn't the restaurants fault) and between the slippery floors and the sudden obstruction I almost fell hard. We ordered a dessert and waited 30 minutes for it to arrive. After 30 minutes we just wanted to leave and asked for the check, which took an additional 25 minutes to arrive. We were in the restaurant for 3+ hours. They regularly inform you that the restaurant has a 2 hour maximum time limit for eating which is completely fine, but I do wish they would hold themselves to the same prompt policy. We could have even dealt with the extended wait time if it wasn't incredibly warm in the restaurant. KBBQ is always warmer than other restaurants because of the table top grills but it was as though the air conditioning was not even turned on. They also had the standard ventilation fans that come in every other KBBQ restaurant I've been to but they would not turn it on for us and we couldn't figure out how to turn it on. We left the restaurant sweltering and reeking of grease. After we finally got the check we were informed the check could be split no more than two ways, so definitely do not bring a big party to this establishment. It's pretty unacceptable when all meals essentially cost the exact same and we got no extras, just one meal and one drink per person. There was only four of us, which is not even a particularly large party. I can absolutely understand not splitting the check over large parties, but four people is a very regular party size. The male manager was completely unapologetic about any of these issues and completely dismissed us. The rice provided was old, undercooked, and cold by the time it reached us. They did have very good green tea salt however they provided very little to us on our salt trays and only a tiny bit more when we requested. Some of the marinated meat was very good but overall I was not impressed with the taste of the food. None of my friends or I will return here and I won't recommend it to anyone. If this restaurant was a person's first exposure to KBBQ I could see them being completely turned off to it and not trying it again. I don't see this restaurant lasting the year, and I only see them making it that far because of high prices and...

Only review you need to read..

I am Korean, been eating authentic Korean BBQ my entire life in South Korea & across U.S.-- I know Korean BBQ!

I have friends in Jax who never tried Korean food & they wonder why I never take them to a Korean restaurant. It's bc the places in town are not righteous & they probably wouldn't want to eat Korean food again, not to mention losing credibility. Korean food is great, but people don't know bc they've never tried authentic. People think HotPot is legit, but it's not & I'll explain later. Today I found a place in Jax where I can proudly introduce my friends to this cuisine.

I lived in California & ate at 4 different Gen locations in L.A. area. After years of waiting for real Korean BBQ to come to Jax, finally my prayer is answered. When I learned it was Gen, I was excited given my past experience w/ this chain.

Legit Korean BBQ has built-in tabletop grills where you grill the food to your liking at your own pace. Better places have vacuum suction under the grill or overhead exhaust over each table, so smoke doesn't go everywhere. Gen's exhaust is not perfect but does decent job. Meal comes w/ complimentary side dishes too. Some places are a la carte while others are all-you-can-eat such as Gen.

I went to Gen for lunch. Three options: $25 lunch, $30 dinner, & optional $20 premium add-on. Main difference from lunch & dinner: dinner offers marinated beef short ribs (KoreanBBQ's flagship protein). I think you can get dinner option during lunch. But lunch selection is very adequate. $20 premium option includes full-sized Ribeye steak added to lunch/dinner price.

The food was on point & that's what matters most at Korean BBQ. Long list of fresh protein options. We ordered marinated bulgogi (thinly sliced rib eye), sirloin steak, pork belly, wine-marinated pork-belly, spicy marinated pork, shrimp, squid, spicy squid, marinated chicken. So many choices I couldn't try everything. We also ordered salads, Korean fried dumplings, Korean-style miso soup & white rice. Meal came w/ complimentary side dishes which could be better. One dish was kimchi which was over-fermented (probably due to low turnover). Good fresh kimchi pairs very well with proteins, and this is where they need to improve.

As for HotPot--not authentic! After hearing much hype (of course from people who never ate authentic), I went to HotPot & was disappointed. Besides high prices, tabletop grills lacked slits which defeat the purpose of BBQing. None of the juices/grease drip thru & your food is cooked in a puddle of liquid like you're cooking at home in a skillet. Meats have no charring/grill flavor. I took a friend there to introduce him to Korean BBQ based on the hype & felt a little embarrassed :) Once people try Gen, they won't go back to HotPot, especially when Gen costs a lot less.

Hopefully w/ growing popularity of Gen, other Korean BBQ restaurants will pop up in town. There will be surge of this...

Food: a steak was half grey, thick fat on steak (we used that to oil the pan for other foods), appetizers a terrible let down they were poor quality, dry, hard, and didn’t taste good, don’t bother with the soondubu soup as it’s not true to the original and is a salt and tomato base with a big carved out chunk of tofu and not hot, first round we were informed that delivery is behind bc of holiday and some of their food is unavailable … then third round they say they don’t have much of it so we can only order one plate per round of beef belly mind you this is lunch what happens to dinner people then?, shrimp quality was low, we did eat but it was mostly disappointing as what we could eat wasn’t good and what we wanted there wasn’t much left or none at all. Be careful ordering chicken, squid, or anything else that doesn’t have much fat as they don’t provide oil/butter and by the time the chicken was cooked part of it was sticking to the grill and after that part of the grill is unusable after just one cooking. Service: mostly not the servers fault as they had too little servers for lunch for how much work it is, everything took a long time like getting a table, getting drinks, ordering getting food, etc, too many tables per server, each round of food I ordered there was one or two things that wasn’t brought, the servers were nice and informative and I feel bad for them because they had to clean, serve, change grills and bring food by themselves with minimal help and this is difficult for these kinds of restaurants, plus having to tell customers they don’t have several items doesn’t look good on them even when it’s not their fault, they need a host! servers hosted their own tables, phone rang for a while, third party delivery also rang, couldn’t collect our plates often so we had a big stack, poor management Atmosphere: decorations are nice, kind of weird that the venting system is so big yet it felt like ours wasn’t doing much rather pushing the steam into one direction one person smelled really strong and everyone else had some, fat from the food splattered a lot onto our table Just go somewhere else I don’t understand how they have such a high star rating with such poor quality of everything. Sorry for the...