Only a limited amount of food is ready at one time so I can only eat a few bites and then have to wait for more to cook.
I have to flavor my food in sauces I’m not used to. If I don’t, it’s very bland.
There’s a sharing aspect to ask the food. Nothing can claimed unless socializing a desire for it and everybody reaches into the middle of the food to grab what they want.
The lighting is terrible. This restaurant is lit like an office hallway.
The seating is uncomfortable. It’s wooden benches with a grill that runs under the length of the table that my legs bump into. The seating is both too close and too far away at the same time.
The food is diy. I go to restaurants so I don’t have to prepare food.
More food keeps getting ordered therefore prolonging my experience. I can’t judge when the meal will be over like with typical restaurant experiences.
I’ve had a long day at work and my social energy is very low.
The food fluctuates in texture. The same food can taste very different.
Food was dropped on the table and then put on my plate.
The one dish I knew I liked and didn’t have to fret over was dipped into by other people’s spoons so I couldn’t eat it anymore.
Exceptions:
I get to use chopsticks.
It made my gf happy.
You don’t have to like every style of food. It’s good that you gave it a shot.
For Korean BBQ, and other restaurants like this such as Hot Pot, you need to drop any conception you have about these being places you go to eat. These are places you go to socialize, the food is secondary. This is food that is optimized to be eaten slowly over 2+ hours, because you aren’t there for the food, you’re there to hang out with people.
We tend to have rigid concepts of things and get disregulated when expectations aren’t met. You walked into a restaurant thinking they’d serve you food and you’d be done in a normal amount of time, of course you had a less than ideal time.
I had the exact same complaints about Korean BBQ and crawfish boils, but now that I’ve changed my expectations of them, they are a great time assuming you’re with people you like. The food tastes much better in good company.
I’ve had this experience with a ton of things in life. Not being able to make sense of something sucks. When that something is an event / experience, the experience sucks, and if you aren’t careful you will set in your mind that experience as the standard for such events. So much random nonsense exists strictly as an excuse to socialize, and when you don’t enjoy socializing because you haven’t managed to consistently do it with people you like (basically all NT people, 85%+ of the world), the random nonsense won’t make sense. None of this is ever outright explained.
Me at 12, taken fishing on a lake. 6 hours later, what the fuck was the point of that. I could have been playing video games. We didn’t even catch any fish! Me at 30, hell yeah, an excuse to drink some beers with friends and get away from the house for a weekend.
Hopefully you can give it another shot one day, maybe at a place that has more comfortable seats. There are certainly places where everyone gets enough grill space and food doesn’t need to be shared so much.
There’s no time to be social between cooking and eating. Not fun.
The food is diy. I go to restaurants so I don’t have to prepare food.
Tia is a big reason I don’t care for those sorts of restaurants. I don’t want y pay to cook it myself lol
One of the reasons I hate subway
Doesn’t the person behind the counter at Subway prepare your sandwich? You don’t need to assemble, toast, or cut the sandwich yourself.
Sure, but I need to tell them what I want on it. I still have to make all the little decisions involved in making sandwich instead of just picking something off a menu. Even if I pick something off the menu they still ask me about every little thing
Ah, I didn’t realize that was part of the difficulty. I haven’t been there in years, but the fact I could have it exactly the way I want was a plus in my mind.
Subway has premade options nowadays
My understanding of Korean eating culture is that it’s very much a social experience and food is always seen as something shared amongst everyone present. Wanting your own plate or eating by yourself would be seen as odd. I don’t think I could ever get used to that!
At work, I purposely take my lunch at an odd time so that I can eat by myself. I’ve found that people want to make small talk if I eat with everyone else. I just want to eat! It’s lunch time not talk time!
Same, I take my lunch at 11am so if a coworker asks if I want to join them for lunch I can just say that I already ate. Lunch is my 15 minutes to recharge my brain and social battery, and I can’t do that around other people.
I have the exact same issues with Tapas, except the lighting is usually closer to a single sputtering candle, so I can’t see anything on the table. In theory Korean BBQ seems fun but I always end up feeling exactly this way.
It really depends on the restaurant.
I used to go to one for lunch, it was like a salad bar - you setup what you wanted on your plate and gave it to the cook who would cook it for you on a giant round griddle.
