Choga Restaurant — Restaurant in Overland Park

I don’t typically write reviews for restaurants unless the experience is either really good, or really bad. This review is the latter, and covers more than a single experience.

Last time I went with a friend to try out the “all you can eat.” I put “all you can eat” in quotations because I’d hardly call it that. After the first serving of food, it takes the servers significantly longer to return going forward. I’m guessing the service is set up this way to mitigate traffic due to short staffing, and to limit the amount of refills for food. Whenever we tried to get ahold of our server, it was as if we were pestering them, and honestly, this isn’t the first time this happened. It’s like, when the server comes around the first time they’re great, but afterwards it’s like you become sub-human to them. Not really sure what that’s about. If you hate your job, then maybe find another one. You’re given 1.5 hrs for the all-you-can-eat-service, but we were told politely by who I assume is the the owner at about the 1 hour mark, “no more food.” I guess we were eating too much? When asked why were stopped at the hour mark instead of the 1.5 hour mark, a server told us, “ yeah, the last 30 minutes is for us to have time to clean the tables and prepare for the next people.”……After finding that out, I felt the way this restaurant advertises “all you can eat,” is completely disingenuous. In what seemed like another passive aggressive gesture to basically say gtfo, multiple servers came by our table to drop off the same bill 3 times. Oh, and how could I forget. When you first get there, most of the servers will just stare at you like you’re some kind of dumb*ss as you’re waiting by the door. As for the food, it’s decent, though the side dishes are bland, and they tend to give you concentration camp proportions for the side dishes which is problematic when it takes your server 15-20 minutes to come back around to you.

The other bad experience I had at this place again has to do with the service. As I was about to pay for dinner, the chair I was sitting on completely collapsed on me, and I fell to the ground. Mind you, I’m not overweight. I was obviously embarrassed by what happened. As I was getting back up, the server came over with my card, just stared at me as I’m dusting myself off, then says, “ok, well here you go,” then walks away. Given how poor the service is at this place, I’m surprised she didn’t ask me to pay for the broken chair.

Cliffs: -food is decent, though side dishes are lacking in quality and...

I'm so so so DISSAPOINTED with the SERVICE that they give! First, they are not being respectful when me and my friends asked to have two grills because I don't eat pork but my friends want to eat. The reason was because they already set up our table, we tried to accomodate by saying just split our table but after that he seems annoyed and not showing any respect to us. We ended up being in one table and use the grill for beef first before pork.

Second, the service after that was awful, seems like they're still annoyed with us and being not polite. When we asked for the side dish or the kind of main food to grill, they just not saying any polite and kind feedback to us, only being silent when we said thank you or request foods.

Third, idk who is he either waitress or the manager, but he's also being not polite because gave orders to our table while he's answering his phone calls. He just dropped the foods and went by. They didn't even ask whether the foods was good, or if there anything that they can provide to make us feel better while eating.

Fourth, the foods actually tasted GOOD! I like the bulgogi, and spicy squid, well marinated and tasty. We ordered many kind of beefs, spicy squid, shrimps, and pork too (for my friends who can eat it). BUT, the portion was becoming less and less for our second, and repeated order. IDK WHY but seems like the portion of one was just the same amount as the portion of two.

Fifth, we still had 30 minutes and not asking for a bill, but idk why he gave us bill so early? Tho' he also added just to pay when we're finished but still i didn't get it.

Last, the woman restrooms condition was bad. One is out of service, and the other had difficulties to flush and had lots of tissue in it. Idk why no staff check with this and clean it.

NOTE THAT the 18% gratuity + service is added on to your final bill, the total of additional cost around $8.89 wow i was surprised. So the total for one person without the premium menu was around $41.88.

Hopefully they will give better service in a future so that the first experience of customers wouldn't be this...

Edited: 15 min after leaving the restaurant, I'm holed up in a random grocery store bathroom, rethinking my life. My stomach is gurgling for round 2 for the toilet! 🫠

I remember when this place used to be good. If I could rate this a 0 stars, that is what I would give it. Complete trash service. They changed their time limit from 2 hrs to 1 hr without informing us when we sat down. They cut us off after the hour from when we arrived, even though the menu says 1.5 hrs (See photos). When we told the server girl, she said it was the owner who is strict on the time limit and nothing she can do. In the amount of time, slow to bring our order (only got in 4 orders), but so quick to bring us two billing receipts (which was a duplicate). Got a 5th order after we complained about the time limit and slow service to bring us our next orders. She also say the cooks are the ones to prep the orders, so she had no control on how quick to bring them out. We were the only customer from when we started to when they cut us off at 1 hour (See video).

Overall, the server girl was terrible and unprofessional. She was on the phone the whole time we were there, and had it on speaker like no one was present, so rude. Eating at this place costed us $42 per person with an automatic 18% service fee. Definitely not worth the tip, the girl never once came by to ask if we were okay or needed anything. I was the one to always get her attention. She had a bad attitude, and had the nerve to roll her eyes at me when I was nothing but nice when asking for things. If they refused to service us, then we should be able to refuse to pay the automatic 18% gratutidy.

P.S. This place used to be so busy, now look at it (see video)... that says a lot. Now both my wallet and stomach are...