Seoul Pocha 서울포차 — Restaurant in Oklahoma City

Our overall experience could’ve been great. The atmosphere was fun, the food was fine, and one of the staff members, JT, was extremely accommodating. The night was soured by our server, Tristian, who was hands-down one of the rudest servers I’ve ever encountered. I have never before been antagonized and harassed while dining out before until this night.

To give context, I was celebrating my birthday with close friends who drove 2.5 hours from out of state to join me on a Friday night. We arrived around 9 PM, ordered a generous amount of food and drinks. Some of the pricing was questionable (like a single Shin Ramen packet for $10), but whatever, we were there for good vibes and a fun time.

The issue started when we received two orders of fried dumplings, despite only ordering one. We immediately pressed the service buzzer and spoke to JT, who reassured us the second order would be taken care of. He kindly said to just keep it after we had asked him if he was sure he didn’t want to take the food back, so we began eating from both plates as to not waste. A similar situation happened with our drinks, three arrived when we only ordered two. Again, we didn’t want to cause a fuss and decided to just accept it.

Tristian then abruptly stormed towards our table and (rather than politely clarifying) with his whole chest accused us of being dishonest about our order towards JT. Word for word with much attitude, he said, “I was told that you had said you did not order the second plate of dumplings. That is not how I recall our interaction. This is what you ordered…” and proceed to list all the items we had and had not ordered (the second plate of dumplings). His tone was condescending, aggressive, and completely uncalled for. I calmly told him he was welcome to take the second dumpling plate back or charge us if needed. He replied that it couldn’t be returned since we had already “touched it,” and stormed off. Ironically and comically, 10–20 minutes later, he returned, while my friend was in mid reach with the dumpling in his chopsticks, snatched the plate away and said, “I’m taking this back now.” It was absurd. The entire table was flabbergasted.

After that, Tristian avoided our table entirely, except for when we caught him glaring at us from the bar multiple of times throughout the night, which made us feel incredibly uncomfortable. We spoke again to JT, who seemed genuinely empathetic and let us know he had spoken to Tristian and other staff, but apparently no one was listening to him. That was disappointing to hear since he was the only bright spot in the staff that night.

Everything was going well until our interaction with Tristian. I sincerely hope management is made aware of how unacceptable and unprofessional Tristian’s behavior was, and correct the situation with their employee. This was supposed to be a birthday celebration, and instead, we left feeling disrespected and tense. Regardless of the occasion for dining out, guests should never be treated with hostility, especially when they’re doing their best to stay polite and cooperative in a confusing or...

Ugh, I hate to give bad reviews. You can see from my history of reviews it’s something I very rarely do. I usually give places the benefit of the doubt but this was just hard to ignore.

So, to be fair I will say we came on a Saturday evening and they did seem short staffed. I’ll also add that the food was great. They accommodate vegetarians and the drink menu is extensive. The environment was super fun although the space is small. I wasn’t familiar with kareoke in this way and it’s actually in enclosed rooms which seems like so much fun! So, for food and a cool atmosphere I’d give it 5 stars.

That being said, the service was terrible and the staff seemed annoyed and overwhelmed. We walk in and others who got there after us were seated before us. Ok, no big deal. The waiter comes and gives us the run down of specials and the menu. He gives us a jug of water and tells us about the button on the table to press if we need anything. I assumed he’d come take our drink orders but he didn’t. I press the button and he gets our drinks out to us. We still have this jug of water with no way to drink it but he brings us some popcorn. He was so frazzled we couldn’t even catch him to tell him we needed cups for our water! We end up having another staff member bring us cups and utensils. We have our order taken and someone in our party forgot to add a dish to their order. By this point, we realize the button is practically pointless. We push it and push it. We see the waiter get visibly annoyed by the sound of the button and I kind of felt bad because he’s literally looking so stressed between making drinks and running back and forth. We get our food and it’s hot and SO GOOD. Up until this point, I can acknowledge they are all clearly stressed out and the whole way the restaurant was running seemed really chaotic and disorganized. I could have excused MOST of this as just a bad night. Our waiter was helpful (when he was there), he was very knowledgeable about the menu but just seemed really overworked. However, at the end of our meal we go to pay and we need to add a student discount. Our waiter is MIA so we get the attention of another waitress and ask how we can apply the discount. I have never had a waitress become so rude and dismissive. She had a really bad attitude and it was just needlessly hateful.

We already felt burdensome for pressing the button so much and feeling like we were bothering the staff with any requests. At that point, I needed a to-go box and just grabbed it all myself. I don’t ever want to eat somewhere that I feel uncomfortable for making NORMAL requests that you’d make in any restaurant. It’s not like we were asking for anything wild.

I’ll reiterate, the food and atmosphere were great but don’t go for good, helpful service… especially on a...

At full price, it would’ve been ~$40 per person. We've ordered: -Tteokbokki: If you've made this yourself, it probably tastes a lot better than there. It was pretty soft and not as chewy as I'd like, and the sauce wasn't too spicy as I would also expect

-Budae Jigae: They put like 2 packets of ramen which is not really enough for 4 people, but they do put a lot of meat (sausage, ground beef, and spam) and tteokbokki. I would say it's pretty good though, I would reccomend ordering a rice after you finish the noodles to get the most of out of the left over sauce/broth which is pretty good, but the rice was mushhhhyyy.

-Fried shrimp (half spicy sauce and half cream sauce): The tails are not removed, which is not a problem for me but for other people ¯(ツ)/¯. The spicy shrimp was kind of sweet with a hint of gochujang. I would say it was just okay. The cream shrimp...... idk it was not good.

-Fried Calamari: It was good, i mean it's fried calamari idk lol the pieces are all circle pieces and some are kinda thick. Comes with tartar sauce that I found enjoyable. —— On a separate night, we ordered: -Cheese Katsu: It was kind of tasteless, I think the cheese should be more tasty, since it doesn’t have much taste. It came with 6 pieces. We didn't have any sauce to go with it but I have been informed it is now served with tonkatsu sauce which would've helped massively.

-Sotteok Sotteok: Comes with 2 sticks with each stick having like 3 tteokbokki and 3 mini-weenies. The sauce is similar to the spicy shrimp sauce, and is drizzled on top, which I actually enjoy for this more than the shrimp.

-Kimchi pancake: This was good, but usually I prefer a thin, crispy one. It was full of flavor though and very good!!

We also rented the karaoke room, which until nov 30 is $30/hr, but will be $35/hr after opening. It uses TJ Karaoke, but the system is pretty rough to learn since it’s mostly in korean. It's pretty up to date with music though!

The tables all seat 4 people, but you can come in larger groups and they will combine the tables so you can kinda sit together. Each table can probably only comfortably 4 dishes, so don't order too many at a time.

The servers I think are still trying to figure it out, they can be a bit slow but it’s also really busy so it’s alright. Second time we went to karaoke they started the timer and forgot our mics so it shaved off a few minutes. Still, very...