TLT BBQ

If I could give this place 0 stars I would. The service sucks and the food is greasy! I’m glad this place is closed, because the waitress was very rude. I gave her a poor tip for her bad service. She glared at me the whole time, and was rude. I tried to be polite and asked her for recommendations and tried to smile and thank her when she brought me things. She would reply with rude curt responses and when I left she stopped me and asked me why I gave her such a poor tip. I usually give a decent tip even if the service is sub par because I understand everybody is human and has those days. But she was the absolute worst, and would only smile when she was talking on the phone with friends. The food sucked too, and was oily. I ordered the corn kebab, and it was dry flaky and had only peppers as flavor. Bye tlt bbq, you won’t be missed.

They have the best lamb skewers I’ve tried in Bay Area. The service is good too. Highly recommend! It’s a must try if you like skewers!

Unbelievable sh*t service.
I don’t go for the «you will never get service at a Chinese joint» line; especially if you plan to do business in San Mateo, c’mon now, welcome to America and learn some basic manners and customer service.

The food is fine and the prices are good, however, the service abysmal. In general I expect my restaurant experience to take between an hour and and an hour and a half from ordering to paying the bill. There is no excuse for taking over two hours and still not bringing us our whole order. Other tables were seated, ate and paid before we got our food.

I liked their YangRouChuan. It tastes like in China. They opens late so it’s the best place to buy/​eat with beer;)

Standing in front of the door and no one come to me! Lack of customer service!

It’s suppose to be the street food of some city in China. They season everything the same I do not recommend the vegetables if you’re trying to eat healthy. Corn is not the sweet variety. Lamb and tripe are excellent as are all the other meats.

This is a second-​to-​none restaurant serving authentic Chinese northeastern BBQ kabab in Bay Area. Their BBQ A vegetable and chicken gristle are must-​try. Beef tendon and lamb are also to die for. It is safe to say there is no single item that I would not recommend. Don’t forget to try their cold appetizers and cold noodles if spicy BBQ does not agree with your tongue. The food is served on a timely manner and the servers’ response is prompt. This place officially cracked up my go-​to list.

This is a Great place for gathering! Best BBQ place in Bay Area! Me and my friends came a lot of TLT BBQ, we love in their beef, BBQ shrimp, specially egg fired rice, BBQ A vegetable+egg fired rice=amazing partner. Recommend this place for party with friends, BBQ+beer-perfect match.
They accept credit card and price not high. Recommend this place for dinner!

Did not come here for the service, here for the great food that really reminds me of my time living in Beijing and eating out at the street vendors. This is a very popular place, and I would recommend getting here early or being prepared to wait in line for a long time. The cold noodles are a good starch dish, and I would recommend basically anything that is BBQ. Make sure you have you whole party with you, or you will not be seated, so tell the stragglers in your group to get there earlier!

This place is great, and the food is outstanding. The waitress was nice, and the two major downsides are that you have to pay $ 30 or up in order to use a credit card and that this place is understaffed.
Would recommend this place to a friend.
P. S. GET THE LAMB SKEWERS! They’re so delicious!

If you can’t write Chinese, I suggest you avoid this place.
Racist, impatient, disrespectful owner and server. If I can put in negative five stars on Unilocal,I wouldn’t give it a second thought. The owner wanted us to write down what we need to eat on the napkin because they want to conserve paper and pen and also their time. The restaurant is extremely understaff. Tables are dirty and oily.
One more note, knowing how to write Chinese isn’t enough. You better be an expert estimator as well, since they will not let you order a second time if you don’t order enough.
For the sake of the future customers, I strongly suggest anyone who eat here to pay 0.1 dollar tips to honor then

This BBQ place is good for meat skewers and soup. All the skewers here are in the style of Beijing skewers. The meat is cooked well and the meat is liberally sprinkled with the spice that makes it taste good. The beef and lamb were all good.
The chicken soup had these glutinous rice balls in them. It was quite tasty and I kept on getting more soup. My Chinese friends tell me that this dish is quite common in Beijing. I guess most of the food here is northern style Chinese food.
The vegetable skewers were less impressive. The eggplant seemed a bit tasteless and I wasn’t super thrilled about the texture. The corn was just glorified corn on the cob and it was nothing special.
Service was also a bit lackluster. The acoustics upstairs were not good, so if you have large parties upstairs, beware that you might have to shout at everyone.

i am wondering how this place even survived.
I would give negative 100 if I could.
They will rush you and even kick you out just to get the next table.
I wish they close right away.

I love skewers, cheap food, and beer. TLT BBQ combines these all into a whirlwind food experience that always leaves me wondering why I ate so much but also marveling at how I spent so little.
The main star of the show at TLT are the skewers (quan in Chinese) — there’s a decent variety and they are all priced at $ 1/​skewer. They can take awhile to come out but they are well worth it. I’m a huge fan of the lamb skewers but the chicken gizzards and beef tie for a close second. There’s cumin on the table for those who need more flavor to their skewers and of course beer to help wash it all down. The beer selection isn’t amazing (heineken, corona, and tsingdao) but it’s only priced at $ 2.50. That’s an absolute steal right there.
There are other dishes as well if you are healthier than me and don’t want to limit your dinner to only skewers. There’s noodle dishes, rice dishes, and soup dishes. They even serve dough drop soup! Or as TLT calls it– Dough boy soup. I have never once seen this dish served at a restaurant in America. It’s a big bowl and definitely not just for one person, so only get it if you’ve got friends or family with you.

This is certainly a GREAT addition to downtown san mateo and it is unique as there isn’t another restaurant selling what they’re selling. chinese bbq!!!
I’ve been to their original location in Newark and this is more reachable to me and I was so happy to finally convinced my hubby to eat here.
We went around 6pm on Friday and the restaurant was half full. Tables are small and they are very close to each other as the store is quite small and they want to utilize the space to capture the most customers as possible. Their policy (unfortunately not communcated unless you inquire) is to order all your food at once and you cannot place additional order. The reason is that the bbq ing takes time and orders are cooked first comes first serves so when the restaurant is packed, it’s hard for them to prioritize your additional orders as they keep having more orders to take care of from other customers. Just make up your mind in the beginning and order what you want, and not having to deal with being rejected! no biggie, really!!! if you over order, just take it to go!!! duh!
We tried a good variety of the bbq… and while I’ve been to a few other places serving the same exact things… TLT earned 5 stars because of their FLAVORS!!! Their seasonings are the BEST amont all that I’ve had (Chef yang in cupertino, dragon bbq in milpitas). While everything is seasoned the same way… they are not boring as each ingredients/​food item will have its own flavor and texture and their seasonings just enhance the deliciousness of the food items!
Lamb and beef were certainly my choice of meat. they are tender and not overly cooked and the seasonings work very well with the two meat. Chicken is white meat and very juicy. The pig skin was extremely chewy, I won’t order this again but the chicken skin was delicious!!! A-​chai (A vegetable. it’s like lettuce), was a bit bitter which is weird but eggplants and (oyster) mushroom were delicious!!! Mantou (chinese buns) were delicious! you must order this. I also thought the tripes were delicious. Lamb ribs were also yummy but I would just order more of the lamb meat next time!!!
Some reviewers complained about the corn!!! Well, the corn that they use is the chinese corn, it is not the usual sweet corn. They are harder, stickier on the teeth and not as sweet. This is very typical chinese style corn (don’t blame the cook, it’s the way the corn is!!!). I personally don’t care for it, but my (caucasian) hubby actually loves it!
They are always busy… by the time we finished eating (around 7), there was already a line outside the restaurant.
We spent around $ 42 before tips for our dinner. we were stuffed (and we are big eaters). Not bad for a meat fest. What I like best about this type of food is that you and your eating partners can order what you want to eat (hubby doesn’t like lamb, so he orders just beef n chicken and I ordered lamb for myself). The cost of each skewer looks cheap but the cost adds up, so don’t get carried away when ordering aahahahah!

I have mixed feelings for this place. The food is decent, but the service and hospitality of the workers is horrible.
The basic chicken and beef skewers are pretty good and decently priced ($ 1.50) each skewer. The other skewers are okay and help round out the meal. However, The corn is was super dry and I do not recommended getting it. The fried rice was also bland and not worth it. Stick to the skewers if you come eat here.
As for the service, with 6 empty tables, the workers did not clear the tables even though there are customers waiting for tables. They were just sitting around and chatting with each other. Very unprofessional. Another qualm was that the workers only spoke mandarin so it wasn’t as friendly if you did not speak the language.
Overall. The food (skewers) were good, but the service needs improvement.

Service is like 2 stars on a good day. Once you get over that, and focus on the food then it’s much better. The grill that they use is very similar to the same one that’s used for Japanese yakitori. Basically every item uses the same spices and sauces, yet everything still tastes fairly different. As far as the basic meats go, the lamb is my favorite. The chicken is surprisingly juicy. Which puts beef last on the list. As far as the more exotic stuff goes, tripe and tendon can be hit or miss. I’ve had them as hits and it was amazing. I’ve had it as miss and hated it. The testicles were better than the kidneys, but they’re both very gamey. Our other staples: A-​vegetable and the grilled bun. I can eat both of those non-​stop.
The waiters seem to get annoyed if you don’t order everything upfront. That really bugged us since it’s kind of hard to gauge people’s appetite when it’s only skewers.

The food here was good. The look of disdain from our waitress as I assaulted her with my ABC Mandarin was even better. Agree with other reviewers that the patron here should not expect much from the service (or should expect your usual Chinese-​restaurant surliness).
There’s an adventure for everyone on this menu. There are skewers of less common animal fare like chitterlings and billernats (one of those is not actually a thing), but also some basic chicken and beef skewers for the more faint of stomach. Lots of numbing spice for those who enjoy that. I like spicy cucumber salad (涼拌黃瓜), and it’s a hefty portion that they serve here.
Wash it all down with a Tsingtao, yo.

Man this place is always packed.
It’s definitely worth the wait. The skewers at this place are AMAZING. Cooked fresh off the grill, the meat just keeps coming. The menu item I liked best is the «A veggie” – somehow they manage to marinate it with a lot of spicy sauce, and then grill it so that the outside is crispy, while the inside is juicy and spicy. I kept re-​ordering and eating them like crazy. It was amazing!
The other skewer choices are also pretty good. Inside, the décor has a home «warm» vibe. There’s a second floor, so in terms of seats it has quite a bit
The only problem with the place is the service. They wait staff all work very very hard, and you can tell they are all very stressed out, while still trying to keep up with customer demands. Overall I think they need more wait staff, since they are trying very hard but still have problems attending to all the tables
Overall, definitely a place that’s worth going back again and again and again. The food is amazing!

Took my mom here for dinner since I was curious to try this place and with it being 4 stars… It was all the incentive I need to come by.
It’s located in downtown San Mateo and parking is metered until 6pm. There’s parking right outside as well as in the parking garage behind the block.
The downstairs seating area is a bit small. It’s got about 4 big tables and 4 small tables and apparently they have an upstairs, too, but I didn’t see it so I can’t say much. There were 3 people working, but service was sort of nonexistent in the beginning. No one really paid attention to us so it took a while to order as well as get a refill on our waters.
The menu consist of a lot of different skewer items as well as some fried rice, noodle, and other small eats. I would definitely stay away from their cold noodle, though, unless you prefer sour flavored noodles. It was weird. My mom and I ordered a lot of different skewer items from chicken gizzard to potato to beef to corn… it was a lot. But I would also stay away from their corn. It had a gummy texture to it and there was no flavor to it at all.
They put the skewer items down on your table really fast and explain what it is in mandarin, which I do not understand, so I wasn’t even sure what I was eating. except the chicken gizzard because that has a very distinct texture to it and it was pretty good.
Overall, maybe it just depends on when you come here? Because I know I read a review that recommended the corn before, so I guess I’ll just come back another day and see how it goes. All in all, it wasn’t a bad meal.

This has been my 2^nd time (2 nights in a row coming to this place).
Let me begin by saying this is one of the better BBQ places that I have gone to.
I ordered 3 Chicken Skewers and 3 Lamb Skewers
The chicken was lightly sauteed and seasoned to a delightful taste. Biting into it you will find it quite juicy and tender. For me I like to add a bit of Cumin (Cumin is a good source of Iron, Manganese, and other vitamins and minerals. Some research shows that cumin can stimulate the production of pancreatic enzymes and help digestion.)
The Lamb was also juicy, lightly seasoned with salt, fennel seeds and some secret spice. Adding to the flavor some cumin tops off the experience in taste. This is definitely a place to come back for late night dining after a long day of work. If you are looking for décor and anything else, forget about it. Service is quite good if you can speak Northern Mandarin Dialect, as they are from close to Tianjin. Looking forward to try other dishes they have on the menu sometime with some friends.

The old Tina’s Chinese finally gave in. It operated quietly for years even with little foot traffic. Now TLT which seems to be in Fremont has a second shop. 945 on a Friday and there’s wreckage of eating everywhere. Seems the two people working were overwhelmed. Glad we came late though still waited 10 minutes. Went crazy with skewers of pork rind, lamb, beef, lamb ribs, beef flap meat, chicken heart, chicken gizzard, chicken skin, squid, and something thst translate to «doughboy soup» recommended by the server. All super good. I think they just need some help up front as it seems they have an upstairs too. Thats too big for two folks. People kept drizzling in as theyre open late. Good price performance value and solid for late eats