Polkcha — Restaurant in San Francisco

Went here last night with my cousins and I loved the new vibe that the former Trade Routes gives off. Asian themed. Neon lights. Loved it. Drinks were also pretty good. Beautifully made and pretty damn tasty.

Now getting that out of the way. My gripe with this place is the service. You guys can rebrand all you want but if you're going to keep the same rude staff, you're going to go nowhere quick.

The bartender who was making our drinks was clearly drinking and forgot our order. He took forever to make our drinks because he was taking shots with patrons in between making drinks.

A Temu version of Skrillex claiming to be the owner of the bar. Then back pedaled and said he worked for the bar came up to our group and kept talking to us which I did flat out say, "hey stop wasting our time. If you want to keep bothering us then you can buy us a drink". He was taken back by my forwardness and still kept talking to us.

At some point he went to the bar and "ordered drinks" only to get called over by the bar staff to take a shot. At that point we left as it was nearing 2am.

Another bartender (he looked like the character Mario) said as we left the establishment, "the guy did order you shots but now that you left, you can't come back. BYE" and closed the door on us.

The only shots I saw was shorty shooting his shot and embarrassed that he wasn't getting anywhere quick.

I know what the response to this is going to be, "we have no affiliation with Temu Skrillex". And my response is, you guys know him enough to support his harassment of me and my cousins and continue to serve him alcohol and drink with him. That's more than enough...

The decor is really cool and reminiscent of lit up streets full of nightlife in Asia, but the trendy drinks didn’t live up to the hype. We got a couple rounds of cocktails here and decided that overall they were not within our preferred palate.

We of course had to try the popular Gwangjang and Kuroman cocktails but didn’t like either of them, as they tasted very medicinal. For the second round, we got the Hoi An (basically an espresso martini but with gin) and Night Owl. The Hoi An was the only drink we agreed tasted good, as the coffee flavour was on point. For some reason, the egg foam on top of the Night Owl smelled rotten, which made it very unpleasant and off-putting to drink. I’ve ordered many cocktails with egg foam at other bars and never experienced the egg whites smell this strong. They usually have a neutral scent or at most a very light egg-y smell.

I would only recommend this place for their Vietnamese coffee cocktail or to those who don’t mind...

We stopped by Polkcha during our first time wandering the Russian Hill area, and were delighted by the fun Asian night market inspired atmosphere and great drinks. Their cocktails are also super interesting and Asian-inspired, providing interesting options and some twists on familiar cocktails.

I ordered the Nishiki, while my partner ordered the Hoi An. The Nishiki was very effervescent, with the gin and green chartreuse providing nice floral notes but the Hoi An was our favorite of the night, and had an incredible coffee flavor from the Vietnamese cold brew that blended nicely with the genever gin and salted creme to create a beautifully composed drink. Sadly, since we were on foot, we had to leave before getting another drink but definitely will be returning...