Quan Hapa — Restaurant in Cincinnati

HEADS UP!! This place has recently REOPENED with BIG CHANGES (most recently reopened 6/7/2022, this review dated 7/8/2022, sorry for forgotten photos)! And experiences in these reviews will differ. Note recent reviews. I loved the old Quan Hapa. Adored it. So it pains me to leave this review, but it is left in the hopes that the owner who cites the "tough choices" post-COVID might also realize that they got rid of a lot of popular dishes and the novelty of the place. You can simplify without diluting!

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Loved this place pre-COVID! Was absolutely THRILLED it was reopened. Like, besides myself excited to take my wife back! It was such a fun place, the wings and the pork skewers were worth going for alone!

I cannot convey the depths of my disappointment with the "new" Quan Hapa to you, dear reader.

Pre-COVID it was 5/5 stars, among the best of Cincy. They expanded the footprint and spaced out the tables, which I will admit is kind during COVID to prioritize guest safety over maximizing profits. Yet, the renovations somehow make the restaurant feel smaller. The lighting is bright, though it made me pine for the old moody darkness, it gave the impression of being a more private experience (even though tables were lined up with no space in between). That Quan Hapa, the ambience felt like a little secret I could share with others, to love and appreciate in a quiet intimate setting. Now it feels sort of like any fast casual place. At least one fewer anime television if I counted right. Less heart.

My wife says the okonomiyaki is not as good as it used to be. I got the garlic noodles with Wagyu beef. The beef looked ...boiled? It was tough, a touch gray, somehow "moist" but not juicy... and a bit flavorless, but there was a lot of flavors going on in the dish with garlic and parmesan so my experience of the beef may have been muted. The noodles were ...okay. Lots of garlic and parmesan.

The wine glasses had a bunch of... was it dust... on them? I picked out a fiber of something from the inside of the glass.

The new chairs for the high-tops were... really bad! For the love of all things holy please get rid of the new high-top chairs! Metal, small square seat, VERY uncomfortable for my party and I. I witnessed others messing with the chairs also.

Both guests in our party who shared the okonomiyaki - and who had it in the past -were highly disappointed. The guest who had the garlic noodles with salmon found their salmon to be unappetizing. It appeared a touch burnt, orange instead of pink with black edges, and again with the damp, as if boiled, appearance!

The food wasn't all bad though! The KFC (Korean Fried Chicken) wings were still delicious. REALLY good! They used to offer it with three different flavors (and they used to offer the bang on pork skewers, rest in peace), but the sauce it came with was good, they were crisp with a slow burn heat. Worth returning for appetizers sometime!

As long as we sat at the bar stools or at the regular lower table with the original chairs.

And I would absolutely go somewhere...

The written menu is so craveable and made my mouth water when reading it, but unfortunately something went wrong in the actual execution of the food.

The pork rinds appetizer (Chicharon) was average and was just fried pork rinds (exactly like a bag of them you grab at the gas station), but with no additional flavor. They had a few spring onions slices sprinkled over them and we tried to spice them up with a little bit of Sriracha drizzled over them, but they were really disappointing. The sauce that came with the pork rinds was supposed to be a sweet vinaigrette, but there wasn't one hint of vinegar in that sauce and a sour vinegar was exactly what we needed with the creamy fried taste of the rinds. The Hapa ramen my husband ordered was pretty terrible. The broth was so bland and tasted like they had run out of spices when making it. Super disappointing! But, on the bright side, the short rib grilled cheese sandwich was on point. I would have liked a few more pickled onions and kimchi to balance out the creaminess of the multiple cheeses, but it was pretty perfect. Good work!! Unfortunately the side of fried potatoes was so, so bland and not even worth eating.

From what I tried, I would say the food here is not enough for me to come back. It's unfortunate because the menu really is amazing, but the food just isn't. Sometimes I think restaurants try to stay away from really complex flavors and get back to the roots of simple, home-cooked food, but some of the food here was so bland that it was...

One of the weirdest dining experiences I’ve had, and not in a good way.

A few minutes after we were seated, a woman sitting at the table next to us began to verbally harass my group—it started off as berating us for not wearing masks as we were sitting, drinking and eating, and later led to making fun of the food we’d ordered and making other odd comments. (As a side note, we wore our masks walking all throughout OTR and would wear them while speaking to our server.) We were incredibly uncomfortable, and when we expressed this to our server, he said she was a regular and it was part of her “schtick.” She would shout across the restaurant at employees, and they only seemed to go along with it. What was most shocking, is that when she would go up to employees or passerby, she would actively REMOVE her mask to talk to them, after harassing us for far less of an offense.

The final straw for me was when I explained to the server that we weren’t upset with him or the food, just that this harassment of patrons would lead to people not wanting to return, his response was simply, “do you want a to-go box?” What the—? No apology, no empathy, nothing.

I don’t know why these employees are catering to and tolerating this behavior. Shame on you guys for not creating a safe and respectful environment for guests.

As for the menu, the Vietnamese coffee and cocktails were great. The food was either too salty, too bland, or so spicy that it was inedible.

Would...