Colony — Restaurant in Los Angeles

The Colony Kitchen - Moonbowls & The Case of the Counter Queens

Dear Owners, Today, August 09, 2025, I witnessed a scene so absurd it could’ve been a sitcom… if only it weren’t real life.

Picture this: I’m an Uber Eats driver, just minding my own business, waiting to pick up my order. Another delivery driver walks in, clearly ready to collect food for a paying customer. But instead of finding helpful staff, he finds… The Counter Queens. At the front lines, we have Queen #1: back turned to the window, mid-giggle, deep in a conversation about who-knows-what with Queen #2 (the “self-proclaimed manager,” I’ll get to her in a second). Delivery drivers? Oh, those pesky humans outside? They’re apparently invisible. The driver waits patiently for 3… maybe 4 minutes. Nothing. Finally, he gently knocks on the window — the universal sign for “Excuse me, I’m here for the thing you get paid to give me.” Then, boom — Manager Lady enters the chat. She spins around like she’s in a soap opera, looks at him like he just interrupted her acceptance speech at the Oscars, and says: "Can’t you see we’re talking?" Yes, ma’am. He can see you’re talking — that’s why he knocked. He explains he’s just trying to figure out if he’s at the right location to pick up his order. Her response? Basically: "Not my problem, now leave." Driver pushes back, politely reminding her that her job is literally to hand over food that customers have already paid for. Her response? “Cancel the order.” At this point, I’m standing right there, watching this unfold like a bad reality TV episode. The driver, in disbelief, snaps a quick photo to report the situation. Manager Lady reacts like he just declared her the villain in a Marvel movie — running into the back so she won’t be photographed, yelling the whole way. The irony? She can dish out abuse to drivers but can’t handle accountability when someone calls her out. And this is the manager representing your business to both customers and drivers. The order, by the way, was for Moonbowls — your “Healthy Korean Bowls” brand. But nothing about what I saw today was healthy for your reputation. This isn’t just about one bad interaction — it’s about the way drivers (who represent your paying customers) are being treated. If the first point of contact for a customer’s order acts like they’re doing us a personal favor just by acknowledging our existence… we’ve got a problem. I truly hope you’ll look into this and find staff who understand that: Delivery drivers = paying customers in disguise. “We’re talking” is not an acceptable reason to ignore orders. Managers should solve problems, not create them.

A fellow driver who seems to care.

This photo was taken right after they noticed the driver — then promptly turned their backs and ignored him again. She seemed far more investing her time in her nails than the customer’s order. And the so-called manager, the one actually leading this whole fiasco of clueless clerks, is now leaning against the back wall like it’s...

We ordered from "Phuket I'm Vegan" on Postmates, which turned out to be part of Colony. However, Colony does not acknowledge its existence in-store -- instead, the menu of "Phuket I'm Vegan" is just the subset of Sanook's menu which happens to be vegan. That's pretty lame, because it means that ordering from "Phuket I'm Vegan" gives you strictly less choice than ordering than Sanook -- not everyone in our party was vegan, and we would have appreciated having both vegan and non-vegan options when ordering. We decided to order from "Phuket I'm Vegan" instead of another Thai restaurant precisely because we believed it was a vegan-only restaurant, with the understanding that vegan options at non-vegan restaurants are often lackluster.

And indeed, the food was very lackluster. First, I should mention: there was no option for spice level, and there was no sticky rice on the menu. These are bad omens for a Thai restaurant. All of the food was very mild, which was disappointing. The tom yum had pretty good flavor, but was quite small for a $10 portion. The basil stir fry was very disappointing: 5 chunks of tofu, 2-3 basil leaves (barely even visible), and one or two chopped green beans on a large pile of rice. For a $16 entree this is just insane.

Most importantly, the pineapple fried rice that we ordered was NOT vegan. It had eggs in it! This is obviously unacceptable.

Beyond all of this, the restaurant marked our order as "ready for pickup" about 20 minutes before the order was actually ready. We drove over early and had to wait in the lobby for no reason. Well, actually the reason is pretty clear: by marking orders as ready earlier, their statistics on Postmates are boosted. On the app, Postmates estimated 5-15mins prep time for a pickup order. We now know how they managed such an impressive number.

So, obviously, I would not recommend "Phuket I'm Vegan" to anyone. I think this reflects quite poorly on Colony as a whole, so I'm leaving this...

The literal worst food ordering experience I’ve ever had in my life.

This is a cloud kitchen with 20+ restaurants operating out of the same building.

I ordered online for House of Dough, and arrived 30 minutes later to pick up my order. I was told by the person at the front desk that House of Dough closed early and that I would have to contact DoorDash to get a refund.

I didn’t even order through DoorDash, I ordered directly on the House of Dough website, but I called Doordash anyways. Big surprise, DoorDash asked me to contact the restaurant.

I called the number on my receipt and it was a recording telling me to send a text message to a different number. When I texted that number, they told me to again call DoorDash for help.

As of the time of writing this review, I did not receive my order, I did not receive a refund, and I did not receive any form of professional customer service.

This place has hundreds of one star reviews on yelp and Google, so I know my experience is not unique. I’m not sure who is running this place, but it’s clear they have no idea what they are doing and they continue to deliver it consistently terrible customer experience.

If you’re a manager here, you should be ashamed of the business that you are running. If you’re in investor in Colony and you’re reading this, you should reconsider your investments. And finally if you’re a customer reading this, I strongly urge you to reconsider what you’re about to do and find a better restaurant to order from. You will not have a good experience here and I strongly caution you against patronizing...