Masijta Grill korean BBQ — Restaurant in Urbana

Quick advice: Confirm the price - they change it without notice. Choose the cheap unlimited grill, not the expensive one. No meaningful difference, and they will start you with a huge amount of mandatory cheap meat anyway. For Korean food, go to Star Karaoke instead, with good fried chicken, pancake, and service.

I used to frequent this place but will not visit again because of the disrespectful owner.

My friend reserved a table for 8 this May 2019 to celebrate graduation. 3 of our party did not appear on time, while the owner repeatedly asked us where they were and insisted that we call them. The owner eventually said to us, "When you come to America, you need to learn the American way - be on time." I am Chinese, and so are my friends.

Admittedly, 3 of us were quite late - by 30 minutes perhaps. But even if so, why should this have anything to do with our national origin? During my several years of stay in the US, not a single person has lectured me to "learn the American way," with such an implication I found highly offensive: that since we are from China, we live by the inappropriate Chinese way that is inconsistent with the American social norm.

My previous visit to Masijta was not so pleasant either. There is another comment complaining Masijta making lunch price unavailable without updating the menu - the same happened to me. When my friend and I ordered, the server explained that lunch price was still available for my friend's order, but not for my order. He said the menu would be changed soon, and I said that's fine. However, when we had nearly finished, the server came again and told us that my friend wouldn't be getting the lunch price either, because that was their new price policy.

So here are my questions to the Masijta owner. First, you stopped offering lunch price without notifying customers on the menu - is this the "American way," from your understanding?

Second, my friend was charged more, while your server had clearly told us that her order was eligible for lunch price - is this the "American way," from your understanding?

To be fair, some food here is pretty good. But from next time I will go to Star Karaoke where the food is at least equally good, and I can have a much more...

We had never been to a hot pot or korean bbq restaurant before, and were hoping for some help. The waitress did explain, but there was a misunderstanding about what we were trying to order. I said we couldn't decide between the short rib and the bulgogi. She said the bulgogi was the best and I said we'll have that. The cook brought both the short rib and the bulgogi. I didn't want to argue about it so I let it slide knowing my bill would be more and I didn't really want the extra meat. The short rib looked more like NY strip cut up. We started to cook our food and she came over saying we weren't cooking enough at a time and we didn't need to cook it for so long. We were burning it. We told her we liked it well done and she tried to manipulate us into eating it medium well. Then she loaded all the rest of our food on the grill & took kimchi off my plate and put on the grill and said it's better this way. I appreciated her advice about how to eat the food, but not her high handed way of cooking my food without asking me. I was getting frustrated with the way she kept coming over to try and speed up how fast we were cooking our food so she could turn the grill off. I wanted to get takeout containers and leave as soon as possible, but she only brought me 2 for all our food. I had soup, meat, salad, sides, sauces. I asked for more and she seemed aggravated. Then she corrected me about putting rice in with my soup. That was why I unnecessarily needed another container. She said I should learn for next time. She asked if we'd be back and made many suggestions about doing things differently next time. Between the extra food I didn't order, the fixation on shutting off the grill & us overcooking meat, and the long conversation about what we should do next time, I left with the impression money was forefront on the mind of the waitress/hostess and not customer service. She added a service fee to my bill which I can only assume is for her trouble to clean the grill. It was $14. In total, I expecting a $55 bill and it was $100. I was ready to leave so I paid it and will...

Check you bill carefully at the end - they billed us for food we never got.

Went here tonight as part of a group of 7 and was thoroughly disappointed.

The added 18% gratuity was listed at the bottom of the menu, which we were alright with, but the unlisted rule of every single person in a party must order an entree we were not. From some party member's past experience, their portions of K BBQ are large enough to share and we were going to try and save some money (bc we're all eating on a student budget) that way, but apparently that's not an option. We were ordering al la carte, not the all you can eat portion. We ended up making it work with added appetizers but that doesn't excuse the way that one of the workers (possibly the owner) came out of the back and started very forcibly enforcing this rule that was not listed anywhere. This interaction left us all very unsettled.

For the food we actually received, it was okay. Entrees are listed on their menu as coming with an assortment of side dishes (salad, soup, and rice). We had also requested extra rice upon ordering as well. We received none and yet were still billed for the extra. Upon explaining the error to our main waiter, he was quick to remove the charge for the extra rice we never received but explained that "there was no way" to bill the separate items of the entree bundle, I guess, separately. In the end we let it go, but after a bit of time, I feel that comping us one of our orders of 6 potstickers would've been fairer ($6 for 3 bowls of rice we technically paid for in an entree seems fair enough).

But yeah. Not a...