Manna BBQ in National City

Review №1

2023-11-22 21:11:00

I was hesitant to try this restaurant because of the bad reviews but me and me husband decided to go and we were pleasantly surprised! The food was great, the service was amazing, we had at least 5 waiters checking on us the whole time and they were super friendly explaining everything from the menu and their recommendations were perfect. The waiter-robot is super cute! They changed our grill a couple of times and gave us new clean ones each time, we will definitely come back!

Review №2

2023-10-04 06:14:46

This was my first time at the Manna Plaza Bonita Location. It was a good experience. The service was also very good. I do have one negative thing and it’s a big one for me personally, the kimchi was super fermented and really soft and watery tasting . It was a little off putting since I tend to eat a lot of kimchi whenever I go to kbbq(I judge how good a kbbq spot is based on the kimchi and meat quality) aside from that the atmosphere is amazing, would probably come back again. I hope there’s better kimchi next time

Review №3

2023-10-19 15:35:59

I am a regular consumer for Manna BBQ, we decided to try this new location at Plaza Bonita to celebrate my birthday. It turned out to be an awful experience, and felt nothing like a celebration or pleasure to be there. Ill start off with the wait time. When I placed my name on the waiting list it said it was a 20-46 minute wait, which we were okay with. After an hour of shopping around we noticed it was passed the estimated wait time, so we returned to the restaurant to check our place in line. We waited approximately 2 hours to be seated. I have no problem with waiting, my problem is getting a wrong waiting time, as we did not expect to wait that long. If we knew it would take 2 hours to be seated, we wouldve left to our usual location. Once we were seated, we struggled to get a server. We are not upset with the staff, this is clearly an administration problem. It was extremely full and busy, there wasnt enough servers to help us all. We received poor customer service. Hire more staff or dont open too many tables if you dont have the staff to ensure everyone is taken care of. Some of the food didnt taste great either, like the glass noddles for example, but we understand its a new location and this was expected. But not the rest of our experience. We regret wasting our time and money.

Review №4

2023-10-07 17:04:26

The service at this location has to be the worst out of all the locations. Our server MATTHEW came and asked if we had been served yet, but we hadnt yet. No introduction, No Welcome, No Have you been here before nothing. We placed our order and waited and got our stuff in an average amount of time. We were ready to order more food, and constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY keep clicking our call button, but in the end our server never showed up. When we finally did get him to come over and take our order we got our stuff, but not everything. We waited 15 minutes for him come back to us just for us to tell him that were still waiting on water and napkins. At this time we already had enough of this horrible service. It took us another 10 minutes to get him to come over to ask for the check, but this time we made eye contact with him and he just turned his back and walked away. As we were waiting for the check a server that works at another location that my wife knows came up to us and said hi. She asked us how we were doing and we told her about our server/service and she seemed very disappointed. She then thanked us and wished us a good night. To top it all off as we were eating we noticed that our server was attentive to Caucasians more than any other ethnicity. We also noticed the table behind us being a different ethnicity was also treated/received the same service as us from the same server. Be very careful eating at this location as the service was very low quality. I hope they get there act together soon.

Review №5

2023-12-05 12:10:35

I recently went back for my 2nd time here at the location. All the reviews of rude staff and the other bad reviews really are head scratching. The first and 2nd time Ive been here the staff has been very friendly and helpful. The wait time was understandable since it was busy (12-5-23) but once seated the staff was friendly and took care of us right. Dont think the staff was rude at all. Very friendly and I find it hard to believe the people having a rude experience... maybe YOU were the problem...

Review №6

2023-10-15 06:09:47

Jeanette ruined our experience at the end by being extremely rude. We gave a $100 bill and a card so that the cash would be applied towards the check but they didnt use it and charged it all to our card and didnt give us our $100 back. We brought this up to Jeanette and she rudely told us to go find our server and bring him to her. After they found our $100 she just shoved it into my hand after already being very rude and not believing us. I approached the situation very understandingly and patient to begin with so Im not sure why she decided to be so rude and end what was otherwise a great experience.

Review №7

2023-11-05 03:28:56

Food is good but its kind of annoying having a time limit and then having to wait a long time (20 minutes) to be seated, given water, tongs, sauces, really all the regular things a restaurant would give you. The staff kept apologizing about the wait but I honestly blame the higher ups for not organizing their staff better.

Review №8

2023-11-13 18:33:16

This was the worst Manna BBQ experience weve ever had! We went with a party of 7 and had been quoted a 19-36 minuite wait only to wait an hour and a half to be seated. They then only set up our table for 6 people and we had to wait to hail a server to get another chair and utensils. Of which when we finally got situated 15 minuites into our meal, we then had to wait an ETERNITY to place another order. We kept pressing our call button to no avail, and were being avoided by our server and other staff even after making direct eye contact and gesturing to them! We needed a GRILL CHANGE for a grill that NEVER EVEN HAD FOOD on it cause of how long we were waiting! Even when we placed orders they staff got them wrong, and we couldnt even say anything because they sent their robot to deliever the meats instead of an actual person so wed have to repeat the same 20 minute cycle over and over trying to get service. We were seated at 7:30pm, and finally left at 9:30pm when they closed, not because we were lingering but because we couldnt get any service. We hit the time limit before we could even get our orders in!! We also noticed that the SMALLER PARTIES were getting WAY BETTER SERVICE, and I assume that because our party size was having gratuity automatically added, they felt that they didnt need to be attentive and provide proper service!! This was a terrible experience, and THE WORST LOCATION IN THE COMPANY! Dont bring a big party here or celebrate a special occasion here. The first time ive ever LEFT a KBBQ place HUNGRY. We regret going and wasting our money!!

Review №9

2023-10-19 02:29:23

I had mixed feelings about this location. Although it got a bit frustrating waiting a while to put in our orders or get a grill change and the fact that the monitor for the table #s wasn’t responsive to our button, I understand that this location is brand new, and the fact this place is as big as the Kearny Mesa location makes it challenging. If you don’t have the patience, please don’t come here, especially since the employees are likely frustrated too and giving them attitude doesn’t help anyone. Do they have a lot of work to do? Absolutely. But it doesn’t happen overnight and it takes time. I would come back during non peak days, but I would givr it another 6 months before I really know if this location is worth it or not. Our favorite choices of the night were Nuk Gan Sal and Goutsal. Very flavorful and the Goutsal is very juicy!

Review №10

2023-11-15 00:25:13

So far I would say this was my worst experience at a manna bbq I was there a few days ago and I had the worst service ever my server was JIN and I had to ask multiple times for things I had ordered and still wouldn’t get what I had asked for I had even asked another server to place a order and she took my order and still didn’t receive what I asked for. Another problem I needed my grill replaced and that took a awhile our server was helping out other people and our server would just not really care about my table.