Gen Korean BBQ House — Restaurant in San Diego

It truly pains me to write this review, especially since this Korean BBQ used to be one of my favorite restaurants. However, my recent experience was deeply disappointing.

We waited an excessively long time for our food to come out after placing our order, and this is not an exaggeration. I rarely complain or write negative reviews, but I felt compelled to do so in this case. The restaurant appeared to be understaffed, and despite ordering several dishes, they failed to bring out our food that we order in a timely manner. After reminding the server, another 10-15 minutes passed without any sign of our order. Finally, in the last 10 minutes before closing, they brought out just one of the five items we either never received or a refill of the order we requested, only for my soup to contain an astonishing 16 jalapeños. It felt intentional--imagine a cup size of soup, not a bowl, with half of it filled with jalapeños. I'll attach a video to show exactly what I mean. You had to really intentionally grab that amount of jalapeño and add them to that small of a bowl. The manager mentioned it was a buffet Style in terms of preparations of the food in the kitchen but is that truly justifiable for something like this to happen? I'm so grateful that it was me who had took a bite of that soup and not my son or daughter because I would've had to help them from choking after eating that soup. To make matters worse, after waiting 45 minutes for the times we order to come out, the waiter comes out informed us that they no longer had the items for us to eat.

In the manager's defense, we arrived at 9:30 PM, and the restaurant closed at 10:30 PM. Which we left the restaurant around 10:20 btw. While that should have been enough time for a quick meal, it doesn't justify the lack of service and the wait time for our food. After waiting for 45 minutes, to have my soup come out loaded with jalapeños was unacceptable.

I spoke to the manager about our concerns, who offered us half off our meal, which I appreciated. However, I can't say that it made up for this very bad experience. It's truly disheartening to have such issues at a place I once loved.

For this, I had to go back and change my once 5-star review to a 2-star. I gave the extra star for the managers attempt to remedy the situation by the half...

As soon as we walked in, the short girl in the white shirt at the front was useless when we asked questions about what meats were offered per package since wed never been there before. We were then seated at a grill that kept turning off, so we had to move. Our server, Aileen, was unhelpful and seemed to not care about her job. There were instances where she argued with us instead of assisting when we had questions. We mentioned that it was our first time at this Korean BBQ, but she didn't explain anything to us. We had to figure everything out on our own.

Aileen would bring our food without identifying any of the dishes and even messed up our order. We waited about 20 minutes for two items from our first order, only to be told that they were out of those items. It was frustrating that nobody informed us of this for 20 minutes after asking multiple people including the manager. Additionally, we requested the garlic and herb sauce, which took 30 minutes to arrive. I even had to ask other staff members, including the manager, about it, but it still took too long then we confronted her about having to ask for the sauce 5 times and being told she would bring it. She said that the sauce needs to be defrosted then we asked another server if the sauce needs to be defrosted and we were told it doesn't and that the sauce has been served all day? Overall, Ailene was the worst server we've ever experienced at a restaurant.

However, we eventually spoke to the manager about changing our server. I explained to him that we were celebrating something special and wanted to have a good time. He was very helpful and understanding. We ended up getting Vicky as our new server, and let me tell you, she was amazing! She turned our awful experience around, and we started to enjoy our meal and time there. Everything we requested was brought to us right away, and if she was out of something, she informed us immediately. If we ever go back, it would be because of her...

I ate here about a 2 years ago and had a good experience so decided to come back and try it again. Two other family members and I walked in and asked for a booth for 3 people. The waiter seemed to be in a rush and told us they’ll seat us in a few minutes. Then another man who seemed to be a manager bc he was dressed more formally than the waiters came to the front and told us it’s a 10 minute wait which seemed odd bc there was plenty of open booths available. He said it in a rude tone as well. So we waited and watched the whole staff dismiss us as they served everyone else. We ended up waiting around 20 minutes. We came early to have at least 1.5 hours to eat before lunch ended but their service seemed to lag.

When the manager finally came over to seat us, we asked to be seated near the windows and told us that section was closed. When we got to ordering another while later, it seemed a lot of their appetizers and sides were out. So we settled for what was available. I was understandable towards the servers bc they seemed understaffed and our waiter was kind but he was running out of breathe from going in and out of the kitchen covering many tables.

The meats were ok. Throughout the whole time, we kept comparing our experience and food quality to other Korean bbq restaurants and quickly realized how terrible our experience was at Gen. The biggest joke was when they brought their version of Korean fried chicken which was basically chicken nuggets with sauce on top. I thought that topped off their poor quality of their food.

We ordered shrimp and right off the bat, something tasted off about it. So we didn’t eat them all.

WE SPENT ALL NIGHT WITH DIARRHEA AND THROWING UP!!! It was totally not worth it. This has been the worst kbbq experience we had. It was nothing compared to two years ago. WE WILL NOT BE COMING BACK! And advice you to...