Hotpot Haven-Seoul BBQ — Restaurant in Saratoga Springs

If you live on the Saratoga Springs side of the lake, this place will scratch the hot pot itch if you get it.

Let’s start with the pros. Kids 40” and under eat free. That was both of mine. There’s no dinner and lunch menu. The price is the same all day, and you get the full menu all day. And the price is extremely reasonable for a hot pot/yakiniku experience. I’ll preface with my family and I opted into only the hot pot option. We will go back to try the grilling part.

Food was flavorful: meat quality was up there, veggies were fresh, and their house steamed bun (which is actually more of a desert than an entree. It’s a steamed bun filled with custard) is probably the one thing I could have eaten more of. I probably need to get used to the way they do sauces. There’s a sauce bar where you mix your own sauce for dipping. I’m not a pro when it comes to mixing my own sauce, so there sure was some trial and error that left my sauces pretty bland or off that could be avoided in other places that just have sauces ready to go at the table. The place was clean and pretty nice. Me and my family were the only ones there with another couple for the most part until our last maybe 20 minutes or so when things got busy.

Which brings me to my cons. Servers were nice and very genuine. Training could have used some work though. The answers to the few questions we had about the menu were mostly unhelpful.

The real kicker was the time from ordering to receiving the food. I mentioned we were [most of the time] the only ones there. From the time we ordered food to the time we received it, we would be waiting 10+ minutes. Totally understandable with prep time and lots of customers, but given the number of people there when I was, that time of delivery was pretty disappointing. And sometimes it was waiting for a single plate of veggies and some noodles. We wanted to end with some steamed house buns, that took 15-20 minutes to get. Even the wait time for our bill was longer than 5 minutes.

Overall, solid place. If they can clean up speed of service and polish the server training, I’d probably reconsider my rating for higher. Until then, I’d recommend really budgeting some extra time to spend here to fully enjoy the experience. I’m not kidding. Add like 30-45 minutes to your visit once you’re seated in expected wait time while you’re...

Terrible Service. Terrible quality food. Many food items not available. This was the worst dining experience I have had in at least a decade. You couldn't pay me to go back.

I was in party of two and they took about 20 minutes to seat us despite five or six clean tables. (Not a big deal, except there was no place to sit initially while we waited.) After they sat us, they THEN let us know that they were out of some of their more popular items. The hostess was also the waitress and while she helped us make our initial order, she never brought us any plates, utensils, cooking utensils, napkins or really anything we needed to cook, eat, and enjoy our meal. We asked for these things and were forgotten about and had to ask again. This happened throughout the meal. When we were done eating they finally brought out some cooking tongs. Would have been nice to be able to pull out items from the hotpot although we had no plates to put them on. (I had been using my chopsticks.) Our waitress/host was running around taking care of about 6-7 other tables , and while she tried her best, she was drowning in things to do. She was doing the job of three people. How did she and the other person who brought out the raw meat not realize they needed to bring us cooking utensils. They forgot to turn on the burner for the BBQ, so we had to ask them to come and do that as well. The hotpot was bland, and the quality of the food overall was poor. The short ribs were incredibly tough and some of the other meat had way too much fat and gristle. The grade of the meat was incredibly poor. Some of the items we did actually enjoy were no longer on the menu to reorder as they ran out. We paid for "all you can eat", but it ended up being "all we have left".

The complete lack of atmosphere doesn't matter when you can't properly take care of the other aspects.

If you want this kind of Experience go to Kou or Ombu. They have locations in Orem and in Salt Lake county and they have much higher quality ingredients many more options of food to order and sufficient, capable staff. With how long we waited to get seated and finally served some food

I'm honestly surprised at all the positive reviews, my visit was completely...

Come here if you want to feel anxious and have the vibes down😔

Service was TERRIBLE, upon walking in they ignore you, and then when you get their attention they abandon you at a table (no typical greeting and escorting)without explaining how anything works or even giving you the code for the order iPad! If you have any questions, good luck. None of the staff is friendly and our table busser seemed absolutely dead inside and didnt have a clue of anything😭. The tables are TINY and there is no privacy with how close and open everything is. If you are tall and have long legs like me expect to have your knees uncomfortably pressed up against a metal plate in the booth the whole time. The tables are so small it's hard to have a good time with everything you will order. We had stacked plates falling over. You have to go up and get your utensils and soup ingredients, all while people are trying to squeeze past you to their tables and waiters rudely telling you to "move out of the way" so they can stock up items while you just stand there. It's very crowded and stressful. There is not alot of options, nothing is labeled and alot of ingredients share one tong so don't come if you have allergies and are worried about cross contamination. When our meats finally arrived they simply dropped it on our table and walked away without a word, so we obviously started cooking it, and then a bit later she came back to spray it with spray oil, and just sprayed it on our food😭😭😭 Throughout the whole ordeal the hot plate got build up and was definitely smoking us out. The meats we ordered were good, but extremely plain with no spice options and limited sauce options as well. So overall, great price for all the food you can get(all you can eat!), but if you've never been here before its HELL. The atmosphere was so bad I will definitely go somewhere else and pay a bit...