BURNIN99 KOREAN BBQ & HOTPOT — Restaurant in North Charleston

My family and I have been going to Burnin 99 ever since it opened because we loved it. Now, every time I come home to visit from college, we go together as a family. Even when I'm not here, my family still eats here about once or twice a week because they just like the food and the experience. We even recommend others to eat here too because of how well we thought the restaurant was being managed and how well they severed their customers. However, Burnin 99 was a huge disappointment for us today. Our party was made up of 9 people, 7 wanted to only have the hot pot, while the other 2 only wanted BBQ. However, when we were seated, after more than an hour wait, we were told by our waitress that all of the orders had to match. Meaning, that if one person out of the whole table wanted to have BBQ, EVERYONE else HAS to also get BBQ. We, being regulars here, were shocked and asked when this rule was made, and we were told about 2 days ago. How is that rule fair? What if the others didn't want BBQ? We ended up talking to the manager and were told by her that it was fine for us to order different things. Thinking that everything was fine now, we tried ordering again, only for our waitress to begin to get an attitude with us and told us no. We then tell her that the manager herself told us it was ok, she excused herself and went to argue with the manager about what was going on. She came back, obviously annoyed, and told us we HAD to order the BBQ and hotpot option for EVERYONE. Which is $6 more PER PERSON, even though everyone would just eat one or the other. A total rip-off of a rule!! Forcing people to pay extra because not everyone in a party wants to eat the same thing? That is a SCAM!!! We ended up just leaving and going to a different place after seeing the manager and our waitress continue to argue in front of the other customers. After driving 4 hours to Charleston, then waiting another hour for a table, I was EXTREMELY disappointed because the only thing we got was an attitude from our waitress, watching the waitress argue and raise her voice at the manager, and almost getting scammed. We will unfortunately NEVER be coming back because of this scammy rule. This place is no longer struggling student-friendly/big family-friendly. We even saw other parties leave to go to the other Hot Pot & KBBQ...

I have visited this location a few times, and have always been impressed with the quality and quantity of food. However, after this last visit, I am extremely disappointed based on the lack of customer service, and question if I would recommend this place to anyone.

My table ordered the hot pot option, and there is a special right now where you can order dim sum along with the meal. When ordering the dim sum, my table's server asked, specifically, "how many pieces" of dim sum we wanted. I replied with "4," thinking that we would get 4 pieces of the 3 different types of dim sum that I ordered (equaling 12 pieces in total). Instead, the server came out with 12 bamboo baskets of dim sum, each with 2 pieces of dim sum, and this came out to be 24 pieces of dim sum in total. This would have been funny in other circumstances as a true misunderstanding, but what really bothered me is that every single server and the manager in the restaurant decided that it would be appropriate to gather behind my table and gawk and stare at my table while we received 12 baskets of 24 pieces of dim sum. The restaurant has a policy of paying $13.99/lbs. of wasted food, so myself and my party of 1 other person felt the need to eat all of this and proceed to not enjoy our hot pot meal. When I brought it up to the server, they offered zero apology and just told me, "each dim sum order comes with 2." It was incredibly misleading to ask "how many pieces" I wanted to order as "pieces" would indicate to me that it was each individual dim sum piece. I even brought up the misunderstanding and the uncomfortable staring to the manager, and they didn't offer any sort of apology but rather just acknowledged that we were able to finish all the dim sum and the servers were just surprised that we ordered so much. That doesn't justify the lack of customer service here.

I am so extremely disappointed and upset at this restaurant. I had high hopes, but after this experience, I don't know if I want to come back. I felt unwelcomed and judged based on this misunderstanding. I hope that I'll be able to give this establishment my business in the future, but I'm unsure if I'll be able to. Also, it was my birthday when we went. It would have been nice to have a...

I will say that the options you get for the price makes it a good deal, especially if you love seafood. A buffet that allows you to eat as much crab, shrimp, lobster tail, squid, oysters, crawfish, and scallops as you can eat will definitely be a huge draw for a lot of people. However, basing this strictly on it being a Korean restaurant, I don't know how you butcher traditional Korean flavors. I'll start with the kimchi. If you don't know cabbage kimchi, once fermented, should be sour and spicy. If it's not fermented then usually you'll just have a spicy flavor. The kimchi here tastes like candy. I don't know if they just added a lot of sugar to their recipe or something else is at play here, but to say it put me off is an understatement. The beef bulgogi suffers the same problem. Beef bulgogi should have some sweetness to it from the marinade (usually there's a little sugar in it, but a lot of that comes from the Asian pear used to flavor the meat and break it down so its more tender), but again this was like eating candy. The first bite I took immediately made me think they had mixed an extremely sweet American barbecue sauce in with the bulgogi marinade. It's a shame, really, because normal kimchi, bulgogi, and rice is such a classic meal that gives you a wide range of flavors with each bite. Here you would just be compounding sweet on top of sweet. The spicy pork bulgogi was okay, though they watered down the heat so much that it didn't even tingle the tongue, so still a letdown. The pork belly was great as long as you made a good sauce to dip it in, I would usually just eat it with kimchi, but that's a no go here. The best thing, traditional Korean-wise, that I had was the galbi. Though, to be honest, I've had better galbi in other Korean restaurants before, but it was the least offensive Korean dish here. All in all they do have an incredible variety of foods and the fact that it's all you can eat with that variety will draw a lot of people in. But if you're looking for good Korean dishes I...