Seapot — Restaurant in Plano

Do NOT come here if you have a large family or large party greater than 4. The new manager is one of the rudest individuals I've ever crossed paths with, and he DOES NOT like to speak to people who have difficulty with English...

We had 2 family members running 20 minutes late for a table of 7. We were starving.... and they had 4 tables available that could seat us, but we were refused by the hostess to be seated until the entire party was present. SO, we asked for the manager and made him aware that we were willing to pay for the additional 2 seats in advance, and respect the time limit, all we want is to sit at ANY of the open tables so we could eat, because again... we were VERY hungry.

The manager informed us that they were cleaning 2 tables and as soon as one of them was cleaned our party would be seated there. Mind you that there were already multiple clean tables that we could be seated at. The 2 tables were cleaned within a moment thereafter, the manager saw, I walked over to the tables, I looked at the manager and he did everything he could to avoid me.

I went up to him and asked if we could be seated. He refused and said our whole party had to be present and we will be seated when he says so... so his previous statement was just a lie to delay us from bothering the staff.

I told the manager he should not lie to us, and asked a final time if we could sit at any of the now 6 suitable, clean tables directly in front of us. Literally... at the restaurant entrance where you wait to be seated the row directly in front of you is the row of tables for larger parties, so it was incredibly annoying as we stood there and starved.

The manager responded with animosity and was visibly angry, he elevated his voice and told us again we could not be seated. I told him we would pre-pay for 10 people to be seated now even though we only had 7, and he would still not seat us. I told him firmly that he's being absolutely ridiculous, and that we've never been treated this way here before. He was VERY angry with that statement, to the point the a few men in the family intervened and told him to back off and that we were leaving.

How can you walk into a restaurant, offer to overpay in advance, and still not be seated when you have 6 tables available...?

My family has been coming to Seapot since they opened... after this experience we will never go back, and we have been telling everyone that the old manager is no longer there, and the new manager has zero respect for the customers, and is potentially racist to asians (who hired this guy?!).

Thankfully, we are lifelong patrons of Fish N Tails not even 2 minutes away. We went there, the staff combined tables for us immediately and we had food and drinks on our table within 5 minutes of walking through the door.

Whoever the owner of Seapot is... I hope you read my review, and I truly hope you reconsider the new manager. When the restaurant is busy, and Seapot usually is, staff should not treat your best and most frequent patrons this way. You have lost our business forever, and we used to come 1-3 times per week with parties of 5 or more, excluding...

I came here at least once a month, that being said, I actually liked this restaurant. However, a few things from the service to the food have changed, which prompted me to write a review.

Food - "seapot" is specialized in hotpot, so please don't be disappointed when you want to eat bbq. I always had hotpot when I came here, but I tried their bbq for the first time today. Just like everyone said, the rice was hard and dry. You would think an Asian restaurant would use a common brand rice, like Jasmine, soft and chewy. But, nope. We ordered several meats, but it seemed like the slices were super thin and most were not marinated (only bulgogi and la galbi were marinated). The sauce bar is primarily for hotpot. It was confusing to determine which sauce to use for bbq. They provide kimchi as a side dish but don't have the basic "ssamjang sauce"? I normally ordered the spicy Thai soup base for hotpot. But recently, I feel that the soup is very bland. I had to add fish sauce and chili paste.

Vibe - be mindful that this restaurant plays loud music (louder than GEN bbq) plus other customers sitting around you. If you want to communicate with your friends or family, you might want to sit next to each other or yell across the table. The staff sing happy birthday song to those who have birthdays when they dine in. Today, I felt as if some customers were taking advantage of the system. The staff don't check the customers' IDs to verify their birth dates (and they shouldn't have to, unless they offer a free drink or dessert, then yes, verify). The staff would blindly listen to the customers if the customers tell the staff it's their birthdays. Today, we dined in for about 1.5 hours. We heard about 11 birthday songs. At one time, in one aisle (by the lounge/bar), 4 birthday songs were played one after another. The staff ended up going to each table (total of 3) and just sang the song to random people. Some customers around us got annoyed, and I overheard a family said, "It's literally everyone's birthdays today."

Service - your assigned server will be nice and helpful. However, keep in mind of other servers that are not assigned to you, especially the staff that is only responsible for delivering the meats to you. If you ask that staff for assistance, he/she will straight up tell you to ask your assigned server in a very rude way and that it is not their job. This is the reason why, I never include tips on the check, because not everyone deserves the tips, and it is unfair for the management to split the tips to everyone at the end of the day. I always hand the server the cash directly and tell the server to not share with the rest.

I used to like this restaurant a lot, but everything has gone downhill lately. By the way, why can't we reserve the table or join the waitlist through Yelp? Why must it be...

We had a very large party last night for Mom's birthday with 14 people, 4 children under age 10 and 1 toddler. We had to get additional table seating for our party because we would not fit all in one booth. Two of the children do not eat the type of food that is served and there were not kids choices on the menu other than some french fries. The server said that even though the kids were not eating, they would be charge full price. We had to argue with the server and told them that our entire party would leave if they charged us for the kids that were not eating there. We made sure to feed the kids before we arrived at the restaurant. The way the restaurant is set up is very inconvenient, they have these long booths that everyone crams in to and there is a conveyor belt like what is used in some sushi restaurants, so the people on the outside have to request from the people sitting on the inside to give them items for their hotpots. Each person has their own electric hot plate in front of them they can use. There is ONE hibachi grill only per table which I found to be bizarre, because again, the people on the inside have no access to cook their own bbq even if they paid for it, they would have to depend on the people on the outside of the booth to cook your food and serve to you. If you are sitting in the inside of the booth and you want to visit the small buffet of items to get sauces or fries, or wings, etc. you have to make everyone get up to let you out, this goes for the same if you have to use the restroom, you are just STUCK in the booth. We ordered a tower of beer for 4 of us and again it's placed at the end of table out of reach and you have to ask the people on the outside to refill your mug for you. All of us had ordered different types of soup broth, myself, I had the Kimchi soup which was good, however, the idea is that it's supposed to be all you can eat, when my soup was out, the server refused to provide me with more kimchi broth and directed me to use the kettle of broth he had put on the table, using this broth just watered down my soup and it was no longer enjoyable. This was a very bad experience, and I do not believe that we will ever return to this restaurant. There are much better korean style restaurants than this place. It is poorly designed and it was very cramped with a large party. DO NOT bring a large group of people here, it's probably best for a 2...