Woo Lae Oak

Before Woo Lae Oak officially closed, I brought my mom there for a Korean dinner. I love all of the restaurants in K-town but was very disappointed with the meal at Woo Lae Oak. The restaurant is very trendy and has a lot of interesting cocktails, but the restaurant definitely didn’t have anything good to eat.

We started off with some ban chan – small portions of kimchi, broccoli, and radishes:

We also received a small romain lettuce salad with a sweet dressing:

The kimchi and the broccoli were very good (the kimchi was actually comparable to the kimchi taste at Gahm Mi Oak) but the radishes were too sweet. The romaine lettuce salad had a salad dressing that was way too sweet and not very enjoyable.

For our appetizer, I ordered a pajeon seafood pancake:

Way too thick, not enough seafood, and the sauces that accompanied the pajeon were way too salty! I couldn’t finish because it was way too salty and heavy for me.

For my entree, I ordered the kimchi chigae:

The portions were really large (which is expected considering it’s twice as expensive as any other restaurant in K-town) but it just tasted like a salt lick. There wasn’t any real kimchi in the soup and the only pork that was in the soup was too fatty to eat.

My mom ordered chilean sea bass:

The sea bass tasted like it was bathed in soy sauce and not much else – there was very little flavor, it was slightly overcooked, and neither of us could finish it because the fish was completely ruined by the overdose of salt.

I’d never visited Woo Lae Oak before the visit with my mom and I will probably never visit another Korean restaurant outside K-town.