KPOT Korean BBQ & Hot Pot — Restaurant in Roanoke

TL;DR: Overpriced, contaminated food, technical issues, and poorly trained service and management personnel. Not worth the money or gastrointestinal distress - if you even get your food, that is.

I went to this location on January 25th for a friend’s birthday. There were eight of us, and we split across two booths, sorting ourselves into a barbecue and hot pot table. Our server informed us that, since we were technically a single party of eight, we all had to get the same thing, or pay the upcharge to have both options available. He said if we wanted to avoid the upcharge, one group would have to move to the other side of the restaurant. Not wanting to split up like that, we chose to all just order hot pot instead. Our waiter took our drink orders, or tried at least. My wife tried to get a glass of wine, and he confused two similar sounding red/white wines. Most of my friends ordered margaritas, and these were consistently wrong. For example, my friend sitting next to me ordered a normal margarita with salt, and he was given a lychee one with a sugar rim. My draft beer took a good half hour to be delivered to the table, but surprisingly and thankfully it was actually what I ordered. We were given ipads to order off of. My friends had little issue with food arriving. My booth placed order, after order, after order, and we received virtually nothing. At one point we racked up 10+ orders of Pho with none making it to our table. As our respective broths started to simmer down, and after reaching our limit with this exercise in futility, we had our waiter enter our requests on his device. EACH TIME, he instructed us to use the ipad, and EACH TIME we reminded him that our ipad did not work. This location only allows you two hours to eat your fill, so this delay was literally costing us money. Once we started putting our orders in through the server, food started magically being delivered (mostly). What did come to our table was rife with cross contamination (Ex. we had raw fish on a plate with broccoli and noodles). My wife told them she was vegetarian before we ordered, and isn't it common sense not to serve raw meat on top of vegetables? Maybe I don’t want the broccoli I ordered to be drenched in juice from the fish that someone else at my table ordered? Maybe if the staff demonstrated just an ounce of care, my wife wouldn't have been sick for the rest of the weekend. As the nightmare food service finally came to a close, one of my friends from the other table let our waiter know that he never received his margarita that he ordered. If I was serving a group that had the experience that my friends and I did (which our waiter was VERY aware of), I would think that the reasonable response would be to bring him his missing drink. Instead, our waiter informed him that he would have to speak with his manager and review the security camera footage first, essentially insinuating that my friend was lying and trying to scam his way into a free drink. And you might think I’m assuming that they thought my friend was trying to pull a fast one, but the manager personally came out and confirmed it. She gave my friends two stuffed animals to apologize for the scrutiny and misunderstanding, as if that fixed it. Wild. I kept telling my wife all night that I was certain we were on some kind of prank show. I kept looking for the hidden camera and for some host/prankster to walk out with their “gotcha!” moment, because never in my life have I felt like a restaurant was both actively and passively trying to make me have the worst experience possible. Unfortunately, there was no show, just this farce of a restaurant. With one drink each, we paid $50 a person for this “experience.” If you’re interested in coming here for their hot pot, I’d encourage you to just stay home, cook a pack of ramen, pour a beer, and then light $40 on fire. You’ll save money, have a better experience than I did, and only be missing out on the "atmosphere" of the restaurant, which isn’t anything to write home...

I'm not sure how I want to articulate this, but I'll say that this was not a great first K-Pot experience for me. My stars are primarily for our server because she was helpful and patient with it being my first K-Pot experience.

If it wasn't disappointing enough that my favorite Panera in the area was closed and this place took that spot, it's even more upsetting that I'm not sure if I'd want to experience this type of dining ever again.

Upon walking in, I did like the atmosphere. I like that kind of modern design. It felt like I was in for something fun. Everyone I interacted with directly was nice and/or cordial.

Our server knew I was new to the experience. She was patient and nice. Unfortunately, from there, the experience took a turn.

The first thing I noticed was that EVERY plate stacked on our table for use was dirty. I went to the bar to get new plates and I had to dig through those plates to find clean ones. It was the same problem with the sauce and soup bowls at the bar. On one of my multiple trips to the bar, I pulled a dirty sauce bowl out of the pile of "clean" ones, and once I realized it was dirty, I placed it in conspicuous area away from the other bowls. That dirty bowl was promptly replaced in the area with the "clean" ones. Yuck.

On another fun trip to the bar, I went to get one soup bowl. Since I found more than one dirty, I decided to take those to my table along with the one I deemed "clean enough" to use for my food. Obviously, I couldn't leave them there. I touched them on the outside, and the inside of them had old food residue. That was problematic. My guest said they forgot I'm usually perceptive about those kinds of things. It's too bad I had to be that way; I just wanted to eat.

I don't suppose that these restaurants allow you to take food with you. This place is essentially set up like an all you can eat (while you're there) establishment. I understand that, but this caused us an issue. It's my understanding that you and guests are ordering the same things. For example, if I order Hot Pot and my guests order BBQ, that means we're all charged for individual orders of Hot Pot. I have no issue with that:

The issue I do have is that my guest didn't receive their Hot Pot.

Now, what would a restaurant TYPICALLY do in that situation?

Wouldn't they say something like "my mistake" and take that charge off your bill, or wouldn't they give you what you were missing?

Well, management wouldn't take that charge off our bill. They said they would give us the Hot Pot, but we'd have to sit there and eat it, even though we'd already finished our meal and couldn't eat anymore. The RIGHT thing to do would've been to remove that charge or let us take the food from that tiny Hot Pot to go. Since you can't take food to go, remove...the...charge!

It's a shame because I wanted to like this place, but that little bit of nickel and diming when their business made the mistake is a problem for me.

The last time I had an issue like that with a restaurant, that place went out of business. Ok, K-Pot just opened, and perhaps money is tight. I understand but that's not my problem. I did what I was supposed to do.

I want this restaurant to do well, but they need to understand what customer service truly means, just as our server understood it.

The only way I'd revisit this restaurant is if I have guests who want to go. I really want this city to have more dining options, so I'll hope for the best, but I'd rather go to another city than deal with the issues I had here.

Of course, I can get dirty plates at any restaurant, but I can't remember the last time I was forced to pay for something I didn't receive. Hopefully someone will go there and get a free Hot Pot. After all, I've already...

Worst dining experience ever. I feel very unwelcome there. Would not come back for sure. I had great experience in another two KPot locations; so today I was expecting a similar great dinner when we arrived around 8:10 PM. After we ordered, nobody came to set up the pot; we waited for 5 to 10 minutes and had to asked a staff walking by for help. She's not our disappeared waiter and was nice enough to help. We later realized that it's something unusual in the place and needs a formal recognition. Thank you! Today is July 4th and the place is closing at 9:30, so we have a bit more than 60 minutes to eat. Nobody told us about the butter , but we ate at other KPot locations and we knew about the secret, so again we asked a walking by waiter and was informed about where to find it. We noticed two girls sitting next didn't use butter and the smoke was bad; my wife went to talk to them, it turned out that it's their first KPOT dinner and nobody told them about the butter at all! We were so lucky our first KPOT was a completely different business. I don't want to rant too much more, let's just say: it's difficult to find help even though many staffs are around chatting with each other. Once we need the pot to be replaced, my son and I both raised arms and 3 staffs were standing two tables away, and they saw our arms, but no response until I waved. One of them asked what we needed and he offered to help us find our waiter, who was supposed to help but disappeared most of the time. A few minutes later our waiter came and helped us. Another thing was the empty or dirty plates. Nobody would take them. We added some items and the staff who delivered them couldn't find a place to put the new items, so he handed them to my wife, expecting her to arrange them. My wife asked, "can't you please take the plates away?" He agreed to do it after all, so that's another thank you we need say. Nobody else has ever taken any things away after that, until almost at the end of our dinner, our waiter took away 2 or 3 plates when we asked him to change the pot. I didn't even asked him! What a nice surprise.

Around 9:35 I asked for the check, our waiter brought up the number, $165ish, and he kindly helped us pick the 22% tips. I said you really don't deserve that, and selected the lower 20% next to it; I saw that there's "custom tips" or "no tips" but just wanted to leave and wanted no drama. I regreted it tbh. Also I now realized that the $165ish bill might include tips already; our party included 2 adults, a 10 year old, a 7 and a 5. I couldn't do the math to...