SizzlinGogi — Restaurant in Santa Maria

First off, I’d love to give 3.5 stars, but obviously not an option. Secondly, I do find I’m more critical with food establishments, since I work in the food industry myself, and in my place of business, our standards are higher than most. So, my opinion could be overly exaggerated because I do focus on little things, that in my opinion make a difference in my overall experience.

When we first drove up to the business, there was not a clear direction of which way to go. We weren’t sure if we should make our way into the front main doors, or to the side with the deck. We opted for the main doors, and immediately I noticed how dirty and dusty the doors and glass were. This is a big no no, first impressions are everything and in my opinion if you can’t keep something as simple as windows and your front door clean, it does make me question what’s going on inside. Of course, when we did get inside, I saw more dust and display windows with very dusty items inside. Please!! If the owner of this establishment is reading this, please fix this!! The decor inside screams LA chic, with the beautiful fixtures and design, but you MUST keep up with the cleanliness of it. Despite the fact that people are not dining inside, because of COVID, it’s not an excuse to drop the ball on that aspect.

The waitress, greeted us at the doors almost immediately, and met us around by the deck entrance. I have to say when we walked up the deck, it was beautiful! This is where their money is at! They put in so much effort with this outdoor seating, and I was so impressed, I felt like we were in a different city. Cassie, our waitress, was so sweet and incredibly helpful with the menu, and her suggestions on what to order. The customer service is what really stuck in my mind. She was patient, quick with our food and really a pleasure to talk to. I have to applaud management for nabbing this young woman, she’s a win for your team.

Once we started getting more sides, on top of the proteins we had ordered, I was amazed at how much food there was, and I questioned if we ordered too much (which we did). I still couldn’t stop looking at those big arch shaped, beautiful windows, that were dirty!!!

Another big no no for me, was the bowls. As you may know there are no room for mistakes when it comes to food, and the amount of hazards that we try and prevent are endless. One very serious hazmats is a physical hazard, anything foreign that should not be in the food, so that’s why I was surprised to see they were still using bowls that had chips on the inside and the rim of the bowls. Heaven forbid it were to chip more when a spoon hits the bottom and a guest bites it and chips their tooth, that should be REPLACED and the broken bowls should be thrown away IMMEDIATELY.

I’m not a food reviewer, but in my opinion the food was amazing! We left with some extra food, a full belly and we will definitely go back, hopefully to some clean windows and...

It's nice to actually have a Korean BBQ place in the Central Coast. Unfortunately I think that since it has no competition it has been on a slow decline. Those who have never been to a Korean BBQ place may actually give this place 5 stars.

I know there is better out there but I see a slow decline. At one point the table setting included metal chopsticks, these have now been replaced with mass produced, disposable, wooden sticks.

Another thing I noticed is the decline in the quality/authenticity of banchan. Today I got a side of bland macaroni salad, it didn't really go well with Hangjungsal. Granted banchan is a side dish and I suppose a macaroni salad can be classified as such, but with Korean BBQ? Maybe this is just a first for me.

The wait staff is either inattentive or uneducated on the menu. I ordered Hangjungsal and before the waitress left she asked, "Pork belly?" I said, "No, pork jowl." To which she replied, "They sound the same," even to someone who doesn't know Korean, Hangjungsal does not sound like Samgyeopsal.

I did not order all you can eat but last time I did, I was informed that lettuce wrap would be an additional charge. I assumed this was the case for the all you can eat meals. I had previously ordered Samgyeopsal ala carte and was not charged extra for lettuce in previous visits. During this visit I asked to substitute the salad for lettuce wrap and was informed it would be an additional $5 dollars to hold the salad and serve lettuce. No thanks.

My reason for this last visit was to try the kimchi pancake, a fellow classmate had told me they were delicious. I am a fan of kimchi pancakes and make them often at home. I wanted to try out the ones at Sizzlin' Gogi and though mine are much better, I was okay with the first bite. I prefer mine with a little more kimchi than what was served. What really put me off to it was half of the pancake was burned. The underside of half was burned and tasted crunchy and bad. It was not pan fried crispy it was pan burned crunchy.

Since this is the only place locally that you can have Korean BBQ I can understand why quality is not as good as it could be. But because it is conveniently located within a close drive to me as opposed to another city, it is clean, the decor is nice and the wine vault is really amazing; I will...

Welcome to another joke of an Asian restaurant in this area. God knows how they got 4.5 stars(those who know, know haha).

∆ Short review:

Poor quality food and service. The picture I posted is of "spicy pork belly" which pretty much sums up the place. Was expecting marinaded pork belly but instead got boiled and soggy pork belly in an aluminum tray with terrible sauce or whatever it was. Overpriced.

∆ Long review:

[ Food quality ] First off, their all you can eat kbbq menu is formatted quite strangely, in increments of $30, 35, 40. Because the upper levels are supposedly premium items but spicy tofu soup and marinated chicken is in the upper level? I don't understand why that would be valued over beef. Speaking of beef, it's the worst quality I've ever had at a kbbq, and I don't have high expectations for all you can eat beef. I mainly ordered bulgogi because it masked the terrible quality.

[ Service ] Now for their service, they clearly don't know what they're doing. They were mostly in their mid twenties, so not even highschoolers with their first job or anything, yet they lacked basic serving skills. - They frequently walked by when I was raising my hand. Turned the burner down without explaining why when we kept turning it up because it cooked too slow and was wasting our time(there's a two hour limit for all you can eat and they did this about 10 times). Placed a large dish full of raw meat on another bowl that had food inside because lack of table space... Seriously. It was clearly unstable and simply a weird thing to do. Plus, there were definitely other ways to make space. Don't turn on fans above us even though there was clearly too much smoke. And keep in mind there are a lot of tables also cooking in close proximity.

About the only good thing about this place is decent interior? But still terrible for a...