Kogii Kogii Korean BBQ — Restaurant in Riverwoods

This is a long story, but I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS PLACE! terrible service and staff was NOT friendly.

My family and I went to this place with really high hopes. When we got there, our waitress, (not sure of her name but she had black short hair) handed us our menus and began to explain how if we wanted to BBQ our own food, it was going to be $45 per person. We spent quite sometime looking at the menu and came to an agreement as to what we should get. No more than 5 minutes, the waitress came and asked if we were ready and I told her we needed a bit more time, she then walked away and threw her hand up in the air like she was bothered that we were taking long. She kept STARING at us the whole time and made my family and I EXTREMELY uncomfortable. We wanted to just walk out and tell her we didn’t want anything anymore, but out of courtesy, we agreed to just have 4 plates so we could all share and then just leave. When we finished ordering our 4 plates, she then said “you need 4 more plates because there’s a total of 8 people” we then told her that we were going to share, but she didn’t like that idea because she gave us a rude facial expression. When she came out with our food, we told her thank you and began to eat. The whole entire time she was just STARING at us. We felt completely uncomfortable and uneasy. Overall the whole experience was terrible. The customer service was the worst I’ve ever gotten. She was very rude and made our whole experience a bad one. We just didn’t feel welcomed. After we all finished eating, she handed us our bill. I then proceeded to pay, and due to the service she provided, I was NOT going to leave a tip. And I ALWAYS love to tip the serves 20% or more, all based on the whole experience and treatment from the server. But before we could leave, the woman then DEMANDED a tip. I felt too bad, that I just gave them $5, BUT she had the audacity to ask for MORE. I then have her another $5 and decided to walk away along with my family. Overall, this was once of a heck experience that I don’t wish upon ANYONE. I would NOT recommend this place. My family and I are Hispanic and we felt...

Went here with my fiance and a group of friends. I had been looking forward to visiting as I had been told it was a great place to eat. Unfortunately, my experience was terrible. I don't generally like to leave only one star reviews but I believe my experience here merits the low rating. It started by getting seated but the lady who seated us was rather rude and tried to rush us along as though we were walking too slowly. It took them a while to get around to taking our order but when they finally did, we all ordered AYCE with the Miso Soup. They brought our soup first, but the lady that brought it roughly put it on the table spilling nearly every bowl she placed. The biggest problem was that it was not even the Miso Soup and when we tried it, it was cold. When they started bringing the rest of our food, we told our server that it was not the correct soup, she argued with us that it was what we asked for. We told her it wasn't and that it was cold, she angrily took the soup and it took them a while to bring us the new soup. Meanwhile we were eating our meat and we ran out. But nobody stopped by our table to ask if we needed more. We tried several times to get various servers attention but to no avail. It took over 20 min for them to finally get around to bring us more meat. The rest of the service was also pretty bad. We had to ask for refills on drinks and on any other condiments we needed. In the end, someone did end up apologizing to us but by that time we had already had a terrible experience and I was not at all impressed. I understand that $20 is not a bad price for all you can eat Korean barbeque but when you pay that much, you want to get the feeling that you actually did get all you can eat but it honestly just felt like they regulated how much we ate by not coming to our table very often. I will probably visiting a different place next time I...

Hate leaving bad reviews for small business so I kept finding good excuses for the waitress. It got to the point of no return within 15min.

TAKING BACK RICE AFTER IT HAS BEEN SITTING AT THE TABLE. We ordered the AYCE, two items. After bringing all the sides and two bowls of rice, seeing me order cold noodle, she asked if wanted the rice still. Mind you, at this point, rice was already on the table for a few minutes. I said no, so she took it back. I have NEVER been to a restaurant where they take the food back to the kitchen after serving it because customer wasn’t going to eat it. Normally at KBBQ, they just leave it alone. Taking any food back from a served table is a major health hazard.

TAKING BACK MEAT AFTER IT HAS BEEN SITTING AT THE TABLE. We got AYCE, but because we are both smaller in appetite, we only ordered two meats. The first brisket was normal portion. The second bulgogi seemed like it was a four portion combined into one. After fighting over allowing us to cook at our own pace instead of dumping it all on the grill, the waitress finally backed down. We knew we couldn’t eat 4 portions of food, that’s why we asked for 1. What did she do after seeing we didn’t finish the rest? She took it back yet again.

Very upsetting because we had a really great experience a few months ago. Not sure if this is a new ownership or what, but this is not the way to keep your restaurant profitable. AYCE costed 34.99 a person, 20% mandatory tip, the least we can ask for is clean food and leisure to eat at our own pace. Safe to say, we will not be coming back here, so sad to see our favorite place turning this way. It was so...