1943 Classic Restaurant — Restaurant in Annandale

I was recommended this place as a good Korean Pocha, and my first impression was positive—the interior is beautifully designed with a classy atmosphere. I visited for a party with a group of 10+, arriving around 8 PM.

Unfortunately, the experience started to go downhill once we sat down to order 😞

(CON) Poor Ordering Experience: For a group of our size, the tablet ordering system was inconvenient (~6 ppl per table). Each person had to order individually, and since the menu was only accessible on the tablet, we had to pass it around the table. Even with smaller groups, I find this system cumbersome. Providing physical menus or QR codes for individual access would have made the process much smoother.

(CON) Long wait time between orders: 2 members of our party placed their orders first, and the rest of us ordered within two minutes. While the first orders came out in a reasonable time, the rest of the food was unacceptably delayed. Orders arrived one by one, and it took a staggering 1.5 hours for everyone’s food to be served. This is especially frustrating given that one of the dishes—a stew—arrived uncooked to be finished at the table. My rose chicken pasta was the last dish to arrive, and the hour-long gap between the exact same order felt excessive and poorly managed.

(PRO) Food is good: As for the food, it’s what you’d expect from a Korean Pocha—cheesy, comforting, and flavorful. The “rose chicken pasta” 🍝 I had was delicious, and my friend enjoyed the “takoyaki buldak” 🐙, though the takoyaki could have been softer.

Overall, while the food was good, the service and ordering system could be improved. I wouldn’t return to dine here, especially with so many other places offering better food and service for a...

WARNING: This place has an artificially inflated rating because the restaurant incentivizes reviews—they go around to every table announcing that everybody who writes a review gets to spin a wheel with prizes such as free appetizers or desserts. I went several months ago with a large party and, since multiple people in our party left reviews, we were able to get a decent amount of free food out of it. In fairness, they didn't explicitly ask that the review be 5 stars, but since you're going to be showing them the review you wrote in order to get the prize...there's an implicit pressure to leave a high rating, and everyone in my party who participated left a 5* review (even though they admitted, privately, that it was not a 5* experience).

Pros: nice staff; ok-ish food; pretty decor; not too expensive if multiple people in your party take advantage of their incentivized review system... Cons: THE INCENTIVIZED REVIEW SYSTEM; food is overpriced for how simplistic most of it is; the menu is on a tablet, with only one tablet per table (even for our 10+ person party) and no online menu, so ordering took forever because only 1–2 people could look at the menu at one time; limited and inattentive service (spent several minutes trying to flag down a waiter to replace a dropped utensil, and ended up having to get up and walk to the host stand to ask); very dark and...

The food here was pretty tasty with huge portions. I ordered the Rose Chicken Pasta, and it came with a healthy portion of noodles, 3 slices of small bread, and 3 large chunks of chicken. I was pretty satisfied with the order for the price. I also ordered an Earl Grey Highball, which was also really tasty. Ordering was a bit confusing because it's all done via tablets on your table. We entered our order and even got a confirmation screen, but after about 15 minutes, a waiter came by was like...so did you guys order anything? We said we did, but obviously it didn't go through, so we just gave the waiter our order. After that, our food came out after a little bit more waiting. I honestly think ordering via tablet is very unwieldy and more prone to error. As for the inside, we sat down around 5:30 and it was pretty quiet and empty, but by 6:00, I could barely hear my friend from across the table. It wasn't bad though- I prefer loud ambience caused by chatter rather than one caused by really loud TVs and music. We were also sitting in a couch booth, which was comfy, and it also added to the vibe of the whole place, like the huge chandelier, which was neat. Overall, I'm definitely willing to come by again to try some of their other...