"I've been wanting to try this place for a while since the nearest Korean restaurant is down in Moore. I was excited because I look for any chance to eat Korean food--I'm half-Korean so I grew up on it. However, this is definitely not your mother's Korean food, this is fusion Korean food and once I sort of got that in my brain, I was able to enjoy the food.
This is your typical hipster, modern, neo-cuisine type fare. Parking space is very limited but the inside is spacious and open. The menu itself is actually quite small. Very different from a normal Korean restaurant which would offer a very wide variety of dishes. Husband and I ordered the Galbi tacos as an appetizer. SO GOOD. I could order and eat this the rest of the night. $6 for two tacos was an okay price. The sauce on top was excellent and the meat nice and tender.
My husband ordered the duck jook, a rice porridge with duck, topped with green onions and some chili oil. I actually liked his meal better than mine. I ordered soondoobu stew which is soft silken tofu in a spicy broth. I was expecting...well, not this. It's not that it wasn't good but it's not what I've had in mind. I felt there a distinct lack of flavor that I've found typical in Korean fare. There were little chunks of meat and even a raw egg--that itself turned me off because there wasn't anything in the description about it. But I mixed it in and the soup was hot enough to cook it. Problem solved.
My main problem was this: if you're going to call it a Korean restaurant but you DO NOT offer side dishes, you're disregarding a large portion of what Korean food is all about. Typically, a Korean restaurant will offer 5-8 different side dishes to eat with your rice and soup but this place did not have that. I paid $2 to eat very fermented kimchi. I love fermented kimchi but something was off about this one. I don't know if they sped up the fermenting process or maybe this was a bad batch but even fermented kimchi will still have a nice crunchy bite to it. This did until...I ate a mushy piece. I'm talking no crunch and this felt certainly rotten. It turned me off from the entire bowl of kimchi, which made me incredibly sad.
I found that I wasn't the only customer who was upset at the lack of side dishes. A table across from where my husband and I sat also asked their waitress for side dishes but was politely told they do not serve side dishes along with their meals but rather there was an option for "pickled vegetables" on the menu.
Overall, don't go here thinking you'll have typical Korean fare. It's Korean in roots but with a different interpretation by Chae's owner and/or chef. If I chose to come back, I would try something else but only if."
