Food tastes good and I like the BBQ stick. You even can add spicy on it. The service is good. The waitress recommend the "sweet" potato dish to me and it is really good. I like the outside is crisp, but little bit sweet and stuck on the teeth. Another thing is when you pay in cash, you can have 10% off deal. It is great, right? read more

Smiling BBQ - The "sweet" potatoes dish - Barbeque Near Me - San Bruno, California

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I have to say this place is interesting. If Denny's represents the most generic/boring food you can get on El Camino Real, then Smiling BBQ certainly covers the other end of the spectrum. They have a wide range of weird and wonderful chinese BBQ street food on a stick. The innocent looking stick of mushrooms that I thought I would start with, turned out to be kidney halves alternated with cubes of pork fat. I am not a huge fan of kidney halves, but this turned out to be better than I first expected. I love the way you can specifically order things like chicken gristle or chicken hearts on a stick. The fish on a stick is in fact a whole fish. Picking through the bones on this was hard work though.. The dumplings were good. The fish balls were average. The tofu skin dish was delicious. Not a place to bring fussy eaters, but if you are adventourous and want to try some interesting chinese street food, Smiling BBQ fits the bill. read more

Sunday at 8pm with 4 other tables. FOOD We ordered... - Lamb skewers: Great taste with perfect amount of heat. Portion is on the small side. - Chicken soft bone skewers: The sauce looked heavy in chili red color but it's actually mild and taste great. The bone itself is tough. - Yellow fish skewers: I have never seen any fresh yellow fish available here so they must be frozen. However, they taste like it's fresh! Lot and lots of tiny bones so be very careful. - Beef noodles soup: The beef stew is perfectly cooked. The soup base is on the mild side but I liked it. I couldn't believe the managed to mess it up with those super thick and under cooked noodles. Do not order this. PLACE They repaint the walls and put up a few racks with some small decors. I think the tables and chairs are carried over from the last owner. Why? because they're very greasy and dirty. Most tables are for 4 while there are 2 larger tables for party of 7-10. I should've take a photo of their "entertainment system." There is a large screen TV on the wall with a laptop hooked up to it on a chair below. It was playing a pirated copy of the Avengers on mute with Chinese subtitles. They're also blazing Chinese pops on the background while Ironman kicking some a**. Seriously?! SERVICE The only waiter seem nice and speaks both Mandarin and English. The weird part is that the menu is in Simplified Chinese only, no English. I'm not sure what they're thinking... Chinese customers only? CONCLUSION Can't tell if it's good because we only tried a few items. I think we'll come back with a bunch of friends to try out their entire menu. read more

The owner couple is from Shenyang - You know what it means, AUTHENTIC!!! 朝鲜冷面 is a must-have. read more

Like the lamp BBQ very much And MLT plus the vinegar is my favorite Especially BBQ is very good! All of them are good tastey Like it^ read more

Hygiene is a problem. But service is even worse. Wouldn't come back for several long bitter faces, cuz the food quality is not worth it. I was holding my hopes up for the hotpot but it was disappointing--you only get to choose five ingredients for 8.99 dollars and it's way too oily. read more

HUGE BITCH WAITRESS!!! While trying to place order she leaves to pick up an order that's ready in the kitchen... Later we try to order something else and she rolls her eyes then "sighs" loud enough for everyone to hear in the tiny dirty restaurant... After hearing the bell ring repeatedly in the kitchen she ignores it to continue bussing a table. Only time she ever said ANYTHING when dropping something off at the table was "thanks" with the check... fuck u no tip bitch! Tip for everyone else AVOID AT ALL COST read more

This place is the worst place I ever went to it's my first time there and will be my last I order a BBQ corn and its all burn up I would never come back here again read more

Strongly asking Yelp for Negative start option. Avoid this one at all. The owner seems like not really interested to do business (maybe the owner is hella rich), but to play majiang during business hours. Bad food, bad service = shut down soon. read more

Came here in the past, and stopped by on my way home about a month or 2 ago, just trying to buy some steamed rice, and the waitress there, didn't really speak English and told me that they don't sell steamed riced and that they don't even have any and tried to sell me something else expensive, when I ordered it in the past. read more

Not really clean restaurant. My friend got some kind of food poisoning very next day, have to goto emergency and get treatment. Scare me how the plate is all greasy and I saw they just left uncooked "meat" on the ground. The food is not good also, hopefully they can improve their status. But I will not go there again because the food poisoning. read more

I really wanted to like this place but it was a let down compared to chef yang's in Cupertino. At least 1/3 of my beef skewers were pieces of fat & had no actual meat on it. The meat wasn't very flavorful & the sauce was sloppily slapped on so that part of the meat didn't even have sauce on it. Compared to BBQ skewers I've had in China, this is nowhere close as the ones in china are spicy & full of flavor plus it has a dry rub seasoning rather than a sauce, which is what I was expecting. Bottom line, just go to the South Bay for more authentic skewers! read more

I will not come back anymore. the food is bad and dry. look like the meat a few days already. The one in union city is more batter than this one. read more

There is only one word to describe this restaurant "DISGUSTING"! The same nasty spicy seasoning is added to every dish. It tasted like they incorporated all their leftover spices together to make one nasty seasoning. This is definitely NOT authentic Chinese food!!! read more

This is the best Northeast Chinese bbq that I have ever tried so far.It matches my taste. If you like to try Northeast style of Chinese bbq and want to have a beer with buddies this place is the right spot. They open until midnight or later everyday. The lamb skewer is greasy or oily some people may not like the fat on the lamb but it really depends on people's taste. Other bbq orders are also great but for me I only eat lamb. Most friends of mine would like to eat here more than other places for the Chinese bbq. The owner is also pretty friendly to everyone. Besides the skewers cold dishes and traditional local Chinese dishes are also great! This place is really for people who want to eat the real local Chinese food. Not for the American style kungpao? orange chicken, food like panda express etc fans cuz they do not have on the menu. read more

This place is really just okay. Personally I like TLT BBQ more if I want to have some Chinese BBQ. The light is really ambient, and the waitress serving me that day was kind of impolite. I wouldn't come here again in the future unless i really don't have a place to go to eat Chinese BBQ. read more

The skewers here are so delicious! This is a must try spot. I had the chicken skins, chicken wings, lamb, beef, and they were soo delicious!! They're not very good at speaking English, but they are nice and polite. Their skewers are a must try read more

I like the fried chicken bone here, very tasty. The ma la tang and BBQ egg plant is another recommendation.

Poor poor service! The waitress is so rude. If you hate your job, find a new one!

Horrible, got very sick after eating here. I would give it negative stars if possible. Should have known better given how dirty the place is. read more

I do not like to give bad reviews. But if a business earned it...We were driving home from the SFBA and my wife wanted to eat here. It was a regrettable experience. Dilapidated building and foul bathroom, sorry, I tell it like it is. We ordered the "Chicken Rack" and Lamb bbq. The chicken rack is just chicken bones with a ton of salty bbq sauce. The lamb is tiny pieces of fatty meat and pieces of soft bones. We had the squid, that were miniature size with no taste. No wonder the waitress keep saying we did not order enough. Which is kind of rude, since we ordered 3 dishes for 2 of us. We were not that hungry. So we ordered one more dish. But the only thing we finished there was a plate of steamed vegetable! read more

Chicken Katsu changed good. Promotion price is very attractive, like $6.89 BBQ Chicken, $6.99 new noodle beef stew taste great, price is very attactive.　I recommend to my friend as well. read more

The feeling is just like in my hometown. Like it so much! The only thing for some people is the spicy pepper is the Chinese typical style. Also, the sweet potato is so yummy! read more

Velly velly good. Taste like traditional authentic so soft so tender good food like my great grandma use to make. she was a 8 star chinese hotel restaurant director of operations chef that was ranked number 1 in beijing china and china beijing. read more

Never reviewed anything else on Yelp, but this place drove me to my first post. 0 stars for the attitude. the waitress is just MEAN. The waiter told us we cannot add orders afterwards because it's weekend and they were busy (WTF!) even though other tables continued to add orders when they were eating. Parking is not so easy because you need to compete against the lodging guests from motels nearby. The surrounding is just a little better than sketchy. Plates and bowls dont seem to guarantee hygiene safety. DO NOT RECOMMEND. read more

I have never had such bad experience before!!!! don't come here! Firstly, I want to say I am a very traditional Chinese. I read somewhere else saying ppl gave bad reviews because they are all whites and don't know how to appreciate it. This is not the case for me. I do miss those skewers by streets in China, this is also why i came to this place. Turns out it doesn't worth it at all. Getting to the food. portion is really really small considering price. Taste is ok for the first dish we ordered. Then, everything tastes the same. They use the same sause for everything!!! how lazy can the chef be! Service is really bad too. There was only one waiter for the time I went. He was constantly talking to others when taking my order. Okay, and then the most important thing I want to say: I posted one comment on Weibo (Chinese twitter) about how I don't like this place, then THE OWNER OF THIS PLACE STARTED TO ATTACK ME! He was using bad language towards me, calling I have problem with my tasts, I know nothing about eating, there is something wrong with my tongue. In other words, their food is perfect, if you don't like it, there is something wrong with yourself. Bad bad bad experience. I will never go back to the place ever. read more

Went there tonight thinking that it was Sunny Shanghai. Instead, surprised to see this place. First impression was one of the waiters sitting outside on a cigarette break about 5 feet from the door. Wife and I decided to try it -- that a mistake. Waitress asked us 3 times to take our order before we barely looked at the menu. Most of the selections are bbq skewers. Not much food on each skewer. Also ordered some shrimp and chives dumplings. These were terrible with barely any shrimp. It was mostly egg and chives. Had to wait a long time for one skewer even though customers arriving after us got their food. Spent over $20 for two of us and left hungry. For a chinese restaurant, that's bad. read more

oh my god this place is disgusting if your not asian do not go here, and trust me I love Asian food: Korean, Chinese, ect the food was cold, reheated, covered in cumin, tasted like cold dog shit, and it was impossible to understand what to order I got a bunch of things on sticks that tasted multiple days old. I wouldn't feed my enemies this stuff... one of the menu options was called "cold rape" that should say enough... if you know what to get and don't order in English maybe your pallate won't get cold rape otherwise your better off not eating, I threw it all away after one bite... If you know what your doing here maybe its not as bad as my experience was read more

Dirty foods and ridiculous price! The lamb skews tasted so bad like the meat was left outside for too many days. There is a much better place in Cupertino. We paid much less while had way more foods than this place. Avoid! read more

it cant compare with newwark TLT bbq which is way muc better...

What kind of place needs $30 minimum for credit cards if y'all sell things for $1.50. Doesn't help the fact that the lady who I was ordering to go from said $13 when I asked, then changed it to $15, and then $30? read more

i came here for the local Chinese beverage. for those barbecue, taste all the same! when i walked in to the restroom, the kitchen is so dirty and smell disgusting! never come again! read more

This place is smelly, plates and cups are dirty. We ordered lamp & chicken skewer. I found the meat was marinated with too much salt, sugar, MSG & chicken powder due to bad quality meat. The dumpling was even not tasted good as the one sold in Chinese supermarket. We felt very thirsty after the foods. Furthermore, the foods is very small portion and bad quality with charging very high price. I supposed to give minus star if I could. I will never go back. This restaurant is below the standard. SHUT DOWN PLEASE !!!! read more

Hole in the wall place, food is amazing its little spicy but goes down well with a beer or two. Must try kimchi fried rice here it's the bomb! Owner is very kind and funny as well! read more

*AOVID* Serives and the food is really "bad"！They are not real bbq's，they just boil the food and fired put into a stick to make it looks bbq，it tastes really horrible！The food is expensive as well. read more

Fuck off！super disgusting food. The food were Stale. And the environment is dirty. Even don't want give one star.

The chow mein and kimchi fried rice were so greasy. The BBQ rub they used tasted like the scent of old people. Me and my dad were very disappointed read more

Service: zero! It seems like we owe them something. The waitress there behaved so bad.

I've driven by this place a hundred times and always wanted to try it. I finally went in today since I was in a "let's try something different" mood for dinner. Walked in to a totally empty restaurant. I told the lady I was going to order food to go and she gave me a menu. They sell small skewers of meat for about $1.50 each. I chose beef, lamb, chicken, corn and fish balls. Had a beer while I waited. I guess I got carried away with the $1.50 skewers and the bill ended up being $62!!!!! Got home to eat with the family and the food was horrible!!!!!! They drench the meat with sauce to try and make it taste good. Each piece of meat tasted like Indian curry. These type of places are either hit or miss and it was a huge miss! Practically threw it all in the garbage after we all had a few bites. Still depressed about the $62 I wasted. I am the type that never throws food away but this shit was awful! read more

went there at 730pm to eat dinner, sat down and the girl who gave us menus said we are almost out of everything.... at 730? then she said the menu is in Chinese only, well if you don't read Chinese your screwed !! Are we in China ?? LAME read more