Hot Pot 757 & Korean BBQ - Chimney Hill — Restaurant in Virginia Beach

As a lover of AYCE KBBQ, you can imagine my excitement when one opened in the area. I may have had a bit too high of an expectation for this place though.

I WILL open up with a major con that probably had a huge contribution to this experience. They were DEFINITELY understaffed for a holiday, which was Sunday or Valentine's Day. Only one hostess and I counted maybe two or three people for a huge restaurant. There were no bussers or runners, so the waiters/waitresses were definitely overwhelmed. The phone was ringing off the hook, but the hostess was so busy addressing people's concerns and tending the waitlist and bringing people to their table that there was no time to answer the phone. (I even tried to call multiple times before coming there and I never even got the phone to ring cause it was so busy.) First holidays during a soft opening are always rough, but I've never seen one this bad.

More CONS: Portions are small, even if just for one person. So when you order, maybe get two portions of each meat for each person that is eating a certain meat. This could probably be solved if we could've just ordered more frequently, but our waitress was almost never at our table so half our time was waiting for her (or I assume the order) to come take our order or for the food to arrive (which also took quite some time.) Wait time. To add to my previous point, we got there at 3:50 PM to beat dinner rush, was told to come back at 5:30 PM cause that was the estimated time we would get our table. Hour and a half wait on our table on a holiday? Understandable. We rushed back around 5:20 though, because we were told if we did not show up within 5 minutes, we would lose our table. (Small window, but they were extremely busy so it was understandable.) We asked how much time was left on the wait, we were told 30 minutes. Alright, so they're a bit behind, no problem. We did not get seated until 7:30 PM. I'm usually understanding about wait times, but this was almost ridiculous. I would have appreciated a much more honest wait time, cause then I would not have wasted 4 hours of my life waiting for a table and gotten take out somewhere instead. (Did not want to eat out for V-Day cause of covid, but AYCE KBBQ you can't really do take-out for that. :P) Speaking of Covid, THERE ARE NO REGULATIONS FOR COVID. Other than wearing a mask and having a small bottle of hand sanitizer at the sauce station, there was nothing. People were seating almost right next to each other like Covid was not a thing, and people were packed like sardines in the waiting room. If I got Covid from this, I would not be surprised. According to another review where someone even went on a WEEKDAY it was like this, so I would've otherwise thought maybe they wanted more capacity, they'd open up more seats, but it looks like they seat you right next to other people otherwise. Try not to go when it's raining. The roof was leaking and we were being splashed on by water dripping from the ceiling. Cuts of meat aren't usually what you see in other KBBQ's. The brisket looked more like bacon, the pork belly looked more like ham that was 50% fat, OUR steak did not look like steak. Looking at other people's pictures theirs looked 100% what I was going to expect, so I have no idea what happened to our cuts of meat (that we ordered multiple times and was the same each time.) We even confirmed with our server that it was the cuts of meat we asked for.

PROS: Kind staff. Even though they were overwhelmed, they did not show it. LOTS of sauces! This hotpot has the biggest assortment of sauces I have ever seen. Got to try lots of them. Beautiful restaurant! It looks really modern.

It was their first holiday and still in soft opening. I look forward to seeing them improve and will try them again in the future. But right now, I think my money will be better spend going elsewhere or even buying the meat and marinade from Grand Mart myself. I was planning on bringing my parents here for my birthday, but it looks like I will have to change my plans. Thoroughly...

Ratings: by stars Soup 1 Bulgogi (round one) 3 (every other round) 1 Broccoli 5 (but I don’t advise getting it with the bbq as it wouldn’t cook) Cleanliness ⭐️ Waitress Sophie 4 (she could be more attentive but was otherwise pleasant.) Summary: Company is swindling its customers with switching out quality of meat mead meal and intentionally lowers the temps of their grills in an attempt to decrease the amount of food their customers eat. Restaurant was disgusting, found poop on the walls in the bathroom and hair on my broccoli. Please, don’t spend your hard earned money in a place like this. You work hard for that money, don’t give it to people who want to cheat you out of it.

Full overly detailed and dramatized retelling of my experience:

Let me regale you with a tale of dishonest business practices, disgusting food and poop smeared smiley faces.

August 16th will forever be a day I look back on with regret. We arrive at 6:30, utterly famished. I had eaten only a single donut for the day and had been thinking about dinner for hours.

My friend was excited to share hot pot with me as I had never been to this style restaurant.

We ordered two soups and two barbecues. I dipped a piece of meat into the broth (which was disgusting) and was met with a horrifying crunch that left me panicked at the possibility of a chipped tooth. I spit out the beef as soon as I could reach a napkin and waited for the bulgogi, just hoping it wouldn’t be as revolting. The first round of bulgogi was decent. The flavor was good and the quality of meat wasn’t the worst. That sadly was the only part of the night that didn’t suck. The next several servings were so covered fat that I ended up discarding half of each serving they brought us. They also slyly lowered the burner to the point that I was able to pick up the food with my bare hand touch it.

The low quality meat and the the intentional lowering of the burner is clearly designed to screw people over as a means to recoup what they can from doing all you can eat. As we were getting ready to leave (one hour and 56 mins into the night from culinary hell) we noticed a note on the menu that read they limited dining time to 2 hours as well as a note indicating a surcharge of $13.99 per pound of excess food waste. It is clear as someone who worked in the food service industry for years that the management or corporate has a policy to serve only one round of decent meat and then peddle out whatever bargain they picked up off the floor of the butcher shop.

Eventually we, while waiting the five to ten business days it to cook our meat, started noticing the absurd amount of dust/dirt on the the walls and light fixtures. Note to manager: If you’re going to turn the burner down to a temperature even a man would feel comfortable taking a bath in, perhaps at least present a clean restaurant as eyes will eventually wander if we have to wait this long to eat. While staring at a chunk of dust dangling from the light fixture above the table behind us I began contemplating the cleanliness of the bathroom and excuse myself to investigate. At first, I am pleasantly surprised. The bathroom appears decently clean. Two of the three toilets were clogged and the last had a broken toilet seat and drip pan behind it, no big deal. But then I see it… poo smear… but not just one smear, three, with two being drawn into smiley faces. In fairness to the restaurant, unless this was the employees doing I cannot entirely fault them for this.

I return to my table and try to force down the uncooked broccoli that sat on the burner the entire time I was filming poo smiley faces in the restroom, only to discover a short blond hair on it as it was headed for my mouth. At this point I’m just done with the night. The sever discounted us 10% off for the hair but I’ll be honest, it wasn’t even close to the worst part of my night. I’d take 100 hairs on my food before I’d ever come back to this restaurant again. Having to spit out 1/2 of my meat because you intentionally buy garbage quality meat is worse than...

SUPER SKETCH and I will tell you why. We came with a group of 6, none of us had tried hotpot before. We asked the server for some guidance, she recommended the hotpot & Korean bbq combo bc it was only $4 more. Fine. Each person was then prompted to order an insane amount of food: personal broth, 4 proteins, 2 veggies, noodles, additional protein for the bbq and more veggies. While we waited for our food to come out, we were told to get sauces at the “sauce and salad bar”. Picture a buffet salad bar with several kinds of fruit, iceberg lettuce, a pan of chicken feet and kimchi. No other fresh veggies and then approximately 20 to 25 sauces that may or may not have had a label to identify them. I stuck with a safe option of soy sauce and Sriracha.

We get back to the table where they are already unloading a cart worth of food on the table. Giant plates of raw meat, baskets of vegetables, bowls of noodles, and the different broths set onto the hot plates. We didn’t even have enough room on the table for all the food so several of us ended up just holding plates and trying to figure out how to consolidate.

I will tell you that the two stars I am allowing this place comes from the broth that I ordered being flavorful and then I would’ve been perfectly happy with some noodles, a small amount of the brisket that I ordered and the bok choy and sweet potatoes that came with my veggies.

However, The “New York strip” that I ordered for the Korean barbecue portion was paper thin and fatty. I made sure to thoroughly cook it, because I honestly it was not confident in the quality of the meat (normally I enjoy a medium rare steak). It took me a while to decide that the kitchen scissors on the table were intended to cut up the meat after cooking (no knives or forks to be found)… I opted for trying to tear at it with my teeth instead. The meat had not been seasoned in any way and was extremely bland so I ended up trying to put some small pieces into my broth for flavor.

Toward the end of the meal is where things really became evidently scary. We had all eaten as much as we possibly could and there are still piles of food left on the table. I am talking several pounds of uncooked meat, plates of vegetables, etc. When we asked about taking the leftovers (I want to be clear that we never ordered MORE, this was just what they initially brought us) they explained that it would be charged to us per pound. We declined, and all sat eyeballing the nearly untouched plates of meat and here is the horrifying conclusion we came to: Either they are throwing away enough food to feed the underprivileged community of Hampton Roads every day OR they are using the untouched food and recycling it at another table.

In either case, I cannot in good conscience recommend this place to anyone and will never be back. On top of the $33/per person price tag (not including drinks or tax/gratuity) we left smelling like a grill from head to toe from having cooked all of our own food and feeling gross about the “unknowns”. Add to that that there were random bus tubs perched in the rafters above our table… leaky roof? Fire system? Who knows…

I like the idea of hot pot (think Korean fondue) but this is NOT the place,...