Woo Lae Oak, Korean BBQ

Rating:






Name: Woo Lae Oak
Location: 148 Mercer St. (SOHO)
Price: $270 for 5
Server: Ryan
Cuisine: Korean BBQ
Chef: Us

We had made a reservation for 7:30, but weren't seated until about 8:00 pm. While waiting we took note of our usuals: the music was loungy and nice, the interior was swanky and upscale asian influenced, it was warm and pretty and the bar and tender were good.

When they finally seated us, they seated us all the way in the back of the restaurant at one of the larger party tables. Sounds good on paper right? Wrong, it was so LOUD you couldn't hear 7 inches from your face.

After we had been sitting there a good 10 minutes, Ryan the sashaying waiter came hurriedly by and took our order - pretended to listen to our questions, answered nothing and disappeared for another 15 minutes. He then returned with drinks, took our order and we did not see him again for 2 hours. Or rather, we saw him sashaying to other tables with drinks looking extremely busy and overworked - when in fact, his only job is to take the order. Other people deliver food, plates, drinks, etc. Wow.

We got our appetizers promptly. And our first round of drinks stayed on the edge of the table waiting to be cleared Bussers eventually cleared the apps, but no-one cleared the other dishes. We wanted more drinks, where was Ryan? Oh that's right - not at our table. I went to the bar to order and the bartender hand delivered them to our table.

Now at Korean BBQ, the raw meat comes in a box, and you cook it yourself. We ask this: how long does it take to throw meat in a box and drop it off? We waited in between appetizers and the raw meat delivery for an hour. That's fucking ridiculous. Even if it is Christmas.

No one was around to answer questions. The runner and our server both had full frontal lobotomies and couldn't answer even the most basic question: how long should this be cooked? Ok we had ostrich, scallops, sword fish and beef. Ostensibly all of those things have different optimum cooking times yes? We thought so too.

But we didn't get any responses to our questions, so we tried to drink enough sake to kill any bacteria our self-cheffing might create.

Myste successfully drank enough sake for an army, so she's safe. We'll report back this week on the other salty team members.

We'd go into specifics on the food, except nothing was amazing or memorable or even pretty enough to take a photo of.

The food was fresh, but that's about all we can say about it.

Ryan sucks, the runner sucked, the bartender did not suck, and when we left we had to get our own coats from the coat check.

Bottomline: Woo Lae Oak - you suck.