Racheal H.
Yelp
We had dinner with a group of friends and were seated at a large table with six built-in hot pots for our party of eight. My husband and I shared a pot, but from the start, it wasn't heating properly. While the other five pots were bubbling and boiling, ours never reached a boil and kept turning off.
We flagged our server down four times, explaining the issue. Each time, he had to turn the pot back on and the heat up but dismissed our concerns, saying that if the pot got too hot, it would shut off automatically. However, our pot never even reached a boil--it just kept shutting off. I suggested that maybe the grid couldn't handle all six pots running at once and was shutting ours off for safety reasons.
Despite bringing this up repeatedly, nothing was done until the fourth time we asked, when the manager finally came over and replaced our burner. By then, our entire dinner party had already finished eating. We had barely eaten anything except some stale shrimp chips, and since our pot never reached a boil, we couldn't properly gauge if our food was cooked. We even suspect we ended up eating undercooked chicken (major food safety concern).
To make matters worse, the server, while pleasant, gave the same scripted response every time and should have escalated the issue to a manager much sooner. Which makes us wonder why they didn't resolve the issue earlier instead of having us wait over an hour and a half. The place was busy, so I think they couldn't give us a new burner until someone left (our burner came from another table that was originally occupied plus I noticed when getting sauce all tables were currently occupied). Despite knowing we barely ate, they still charged us full price for an "unlimited" meal, plus an 18% gratuity. We're not looking for a free meal, but this was handled very poorly. Had they fixed the issue promptly, we would have gladly paid without complaint. Unfortunately, this experience was extremely disappointing. Additionally, the broth lacked flavor, and the seafood came frozen when served. Problems will always happen in a restaurant, but the way it was handled is why we won't be returning.