KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot — Restaurant in Mesa

This is by far the BEST Korean BBQ restaurant I have EVER been to. My previous favorite KBBQ used to be Gen Korean BBQ House, but they have been a massive let down as of lately. This is 100% my new go to KBBQ spot.

Extremely affordable pricing for the quality and selection of food you get. $31 per person for all you can eat KBBQ, and for an additional $5 you can add all you can hot pot to that. There is an unlimited and free snack bar that has a bunch of different sides (my favorite being the gyoza), and there are even free deserts there too (all phenomenal and highly recommended). There is also a sauce bar that has I think close to almost 20 different sauces to pick and choose from.

All of the food was extremely fresh and amazing. The restaurant was extremely clean, the atmosphere was amazing, and the music from the DJ wasn't too loud but you could still hear it while holding normal conversations which was very nice. This was also the first time I have ever gone to a Korean BBQ restaurant where you would order with an iPad. It made it so easy to look through all of the options on their menu and choose exactly how many orders of each food item you wanted!

I think by far the best part of the experience had to come from my server Jake. Jake was extremely attentive and hospitable. Every single time my drink was about half full, he would notice and asked if I would like a refill (which every time I indeed need a refill as I was going to finish the rest of my soda very quickly). He explained everything about the place and the menu in great detail, and even made a ton of amazing recommendations for food. I have never had hot pot before, so he was even able to provide a great description of what each of the broths tasted like so that I could figure out which one of those would be my preferred broth (which ended up being his recommendation of the Golden Chicken broth). Any time we needed something from him, he was there and we never had to wait long for him to come back either.

To make things even better than it could have been already, I actually took my mom here on her birthday because she said she wanted to eat Korean BBQ. I had spent a ton of time researching new places to go to since Gen BBQ was no longer a place I would visit, and so I was extremely relieved when I learned they were open today. My brother had arrived a bit before my mom and I did, and he told us that unfortunately they cannot do anything for birthdays unless you are a party of 4. This was a bit unfortunate, but obviously didn't ruin anything for us since we were never expecting it to begin with. Towards the end of our dinner though, Jake came out with several other staff holding this massive LED sign and a slice of cheesecake to sing a special happy birthday!

If you get Jake as your server, just know you are in great hands and can expect an amazing experience! I am a strong believer that tipping culture is ridiculous and you genuinely have to work to earn a tip. I'll say Jake GENUINELY earned that tip, I have rarely experienced the type of service and attention that he provided and I do not think I could have gotten a better server than him whatsoever.

10/10 experience 10/10 food 10/10 atmosphere 10/10 worth the money 11/10 if you get Jake...

I've been waiting nearly 2 years for this place to open. It finally happened & it was amazing! I have always struggled deciding b/t hotpot & kbbq, well, no more! I was happy to find the lunch (M-F only) pretty affordable, even w the extra $5/person to have both kbbq & hotpot.

We arrived before 1 pm on a Friday & were seated immediately. The middle of the table is the bbq grill & each person gets a small personal hotpot burner on the side. The first thing you see walking in is a huge 4-sided buffet w all the sauces, spices, herbs & condiments; way more than every other place I've been to in the Phx/Tucson area. Also at the buffet were some desserts (yakwa, sesame balls w adzuki, cake, fruit), some banchan (cucumber, radish, kimchi, & my favorite, radish paper, which is a rare offering). They also had some apps like fried chicken, egg rolls, fried rice, fried dumplings, seaweed salad, edamame.

The variety of sauces to make your dip was impressive! Every condiment I could think of was there. If you don't know where to start, use one of the recipes sitting on top of the station. My personal fave is sesame sauce (they also have peanut), chopped garlic, yuzu, soy sauce, gochugaru & a heavy hand of cilantro & green onion.

Our waiter, Dylan, was exceptional! He was personable, thorough & made us feel comfortable & well taken care of. He explained the process of ordering our meat/vege/starch, which is done using an iPad at your table. You can place up to 10 or 20 items at once (depending on party size) & it will be delivered to your table. It's all you can eat (AYCE), but there is a 2-hour time limit that counts down on the iPad. Although I don't love the time limit, I understand it bc the place does get busy, and 2 hours really is enough time. As is customary with AYCE, you will be charged extra if you waste the meat you order, so don't go overboard.

Some items were dinner only, which makes sense bc it's more expensive for dinner service where items like crab legs, kalbi & other premium options are available.

I was impressed by how clean and vibrant the place was. Also, our server was very attentive in changing our grill quite often, I didn't even have to ask. He was ready to change it as soon as we finished a round.

Even with multiple beers for my husband & one cocktail for me (the Pineapple Painkiller was delicious even tho I don't like rum), the bill was on par with other places. However, we had the added benefit of enjoying both hot pot & kbbq, plus the drinks, which we don't often splurge on.

Would I come here for just hot pot? No. I do think my fave hot pot still does it better with a slightly wider range of ingredients, like blue crab, whole eggs, different kinds of fishcake, etc. Mind you, there are different menus for hot pot vs kbbq, so that's another reason to choose both options.

Overall, I would say this is definitely the best KBBQ in town now. The food was great, the service even better & the entire experience was fun...

Edit: True to their word, they did invite us back, and took great care of us. My review was not intended to elicit this response, but they offered it which speaks to how well they treat their customers.

As I mentioned below, the food is genuinely great. I can confirm that our previous negative experience was an unfortunate fluke.

I'm leaving the original text of my review below for context, but if you're considering hot pot OR kbbq, I would definitely recommend coming here.

Original review:

We've eaten here twice now, and had vastly different experiences between the two visits. On our first visit, we came in on a holiday weekend. We ordered the hotpot and bbq combo and we were waited on extremely well. Our server was attentive, helped us understand the menu, and made sure that we knew that we could switch up our hotpot broth, order whatever meats we wanted, explained the tablet, and so on.

What an incredible difference tonight's visit was - not in a good way. Tonight we decided that we would just do hotpot, no bbq. We didn't think we could handle so large of a meal. By contrast to our last visit, we were seated, had our soup base orders taken, then handed the tablet and left completely alone. After about 20 minutes, my drink was empty and I tried to stop the server to ask for a refill. Sure looked away from me at an empty table as she walked past and ignored me asking her for a refill. I hit the "call server" button on the tablet. Nothing happened for another 5 minutes. I hit it again. Another 5 minutes went by. Finally, about 20 minutes after I first needed a drink refill, I managed to flag her down as she passed by and asked for a water, more soup base, and a bowl to ladel the soup into (had to bundle up my requests as I wasn't sure when we would see her again!)

About another 5 minutes went by, and our next vegetable order came to the table, but no soup base refills. Our server by this point seemed to notice me writing this review (I am writing it as I sit at the table), and - to her credit - dropped off TWO drink refills for me.

Unfortunately however, my wife's soup base arrived with a hair (photo included)

It's a real shame, because the food here is generally fantastic. Maybe just...