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Friday, March 29, 2024

New Gainesville Korean BBQ replica of similar California BBQ

Some copycat confusion ensued Sunday when a blog post on Ken Eats Gainesville alerted residents that Gainesville’s upcoming Shila Korean BBQ restaurant had missed a key element in business etiquette: If you’re going to open a restaurant, make sure it doesn’t already exist. 

In fact, its carbon-copy twin in menu, website, name and logo has been open for about a year more than 2,500 miles away in Clovis, California. 

Blogger Ken Peng of “Ken Eats Gainesville” found the link between the two restaurants when he noticed oddities in the Gainesville Shila’s website. It looked nice at first, he said, but then he saw broken links, a scanned-in menu and rampant grammatical errors. 

“We look forward serving you!” it says on the contact page over a number that rings indefinitely with no response. 

“I had a suspicion that they were stealing it,” Peng said, who has reviewed Gainesville restaurants since last year. “They weren’t being subtle about it at all.”

Peng posted on the California Shila’s Facebook page asking if the two businesses were related.

“No. its not one of us. thanks for letting us know,” the business wrote back. 

When Peng posted the news on his Facebook page, 66 people expressed their dissatisfaction with the restaurant, many adding they would not attend once it opened its doors. 

“This place had disaster written on it since I saw the sign go up. I would be shocked to see it open! Thanks Ken!” wrote Kelly Klunk Thompson. 

“Must be North Korean BBQ…” Peng responded. 

However, it turned out the copycat confusion was just that: a confusion.

The Gainesville location’s owner, Tao Zhao, said he is a cousin of the California Shila’s owner. 

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“It’s kind of basically the same restaurant,” Zhao said. “They were OK with doing that.” 

The California Shila’s owner, who asked to be identified as Lee, said he learned about the restaurant when Peng called him.  

“The thing is it really doesn’t matter that much to me,” Lee said. “He is all the way in the East Coast.”

Lee said he didn’t know his cousin had chosen to create a similar restaurant at the time he responded to Peng’s Facebook post.

Zhao said the restaurant hopes to open in the next month at the former Stonewood location at 3812 W. Newberry Road. 

He said the process has been delayed after multiple issues with permits to set up a downdraft, an underground venting system, to create a smokeless environment.

Zhao also owns Fujiyama Japanese Steakhouse in Vero Beach and Melbourne, but decided to open the Korean BBQ restaurant to cater to the college crowd. 

“The concept of the Korean BBQ I think is popular among young kids,” he said.

Customers will be able to cook their own food and choose from $13.99 lunch plates, $18.99 dinner plates or $23.99 premium dinner plates. Groups must agree on one plate type, according to the menu, which reads the “whole group will be charged with same price selection.”

The menu also specifies that tables will have a 90-minute time limit, something Zhao said is a common all-you-can-eat restaurant policy. Guests will be charged for any meat that is not eaten, and take-out is not allowed. 

Children get half-off on meals, but must be within the 36- to 52-inch height range to qualify for a discount. 

“We are not going to be very strict on the height of the kids,” Zhao clarified. 

Copycat or not, the restrictions are putting a damper on the excitement for the restaurant’s opening. 

“I’m going to take my tall a** children elsewhere,” Tyler Black, owner of Ameraucana Wood Fire Food Truck, wrote on Ken Eats Gainesville’s Facebook post.

[A version of this story ran on page 4 on 10/7/2014]

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