Red Holic

Way better than the rest. My friend been telling me about this place for months. So with them having a Groupon deal why not giving them a try. So with the deal for two you get two salads 1 dumplings and 1 chicken entrée. First thing that came out was soup, salad, dumplings, then chicken. I was not told that soup was included, so I was surprised when it came out. But the star of this review is the chicken we got the sweet and spicy along with the soy. To me the sweet and spicy was the best, but both was good. Heck I don’t even line soy sauce. But on this chicken or couldn’t do no wrong.

Food was pretty good it wasn’t the best but it was still good that I would make a trip to go again! Service was really good. Our food took a bit but I didn’t even notice it because the server gave us soup and complimentary watermelon! I would rate the food as 3 stars but the service allowed me to bump it up to 4 stars

My wife and I visited this place last Saturday for the first time, and it was a great place to have all sorts of Korean light — snacky type of foods. We tried the platter — with their 4 best selections with cabbage salads. The dish was gigantic, and huge — bang for the bucks! Food was great, fried vegetables and sweet potato was just right — crispy and warm enough. We will definitely visit here again for any occasion — and we just started to have desires for trying other menus. Also staffs are very generous, we were well greeted, and accommodation with my 2 year old son was ready. Impressed with the food and staffs. Recommended!

I have no idea with this restaurant’s decoration. It looks nice BUT the waitress IS NOT. When we pay, she always went back and forth to check how much tips we put. That was so rude, my friends and I feel like we are not respected. Moreover, the recommendation for tips is too high. (18%). Last time, I came to eat and orderd for to go, the woman charged everything in one bill, and I need to pay more tips. We won’t come back this restaurant anymore.

This isn’t the kind of place you go into looking for great service, so don’t expect it. The waitress did however make a few recommendations which I appreciated. Our Groupon was for 4 people: 4 salads, 2 (select) chicken entrees, and 2 plates of dumplings. We ordered the soy chicken, sweet & sour chicken, sweet potato & cheese fried dumplings, and the steamed dumplings. It came w/​pickled radishes: the white and yellow ones. So this is the part that threw me off, the chicken was medium size nuggets of breast meat w/​the bone in. We had MAYBE 4 drumettes out of both plates. The sweet and sour flavor wasn’t all that, the soy was better but again it still wasn’t all that. I likely felt this way because Bön Chon is everything to me. I’ve had other Korean FC but Bön Chon has always been the best and this, quite frankly, was the worst. The sweet potato & cheese dumplings were really good especially w/​the yellow radish and soy sauce. Luckily, we came here w/​a Groupon, so no hard feelings on the experience. I wouldn’t come back though.

My coworker once told me his brother disappeared for a few hours in Annandale and returned saying he had found the holy grail of chicken. This is that place.
I first came here last summer since I was on a Korean fried/​seasoned chicken kick and I was just looking up places. It’s a cute little place — definitely reminds me of smaller restaurants I see in Korean dramas and movies.
I haven’t been to many other Korean chicken places but this place is amazing. We got the sweet and spicy chicken and it does not skimp on spices. You can also smell the fragrant cinnamon as it comes to the table and it’s just delicious. The tteokbokki is some of the softest/​chewiest I’ve had. Again, spicier than some other places, but so good. We got that with the kimbap combo. It was a TON of chicken (at least for 2 people) and we wanted to finish the tteokbokki there since it’d get hard on the way home.
I went back a few months ago and the chicken was just as good — definitely recommend!

We came here to get the Groupon deal: we got the soy chicken, the sweet and spicy chicken, and the pan fried dumplings. We ordered the bulgogi kimbap extra.
Soy chicken: 3.5÷5 — not bad, had a nice crunch. Lacked some salt but the chicken was still juicy and not dry.
Sweet and spicy chicken: ²⁄₅ — strange flavor. I could taste the sweet but not the spicy, nor any savory. Again, chicken is juicy and not dry.
Dumplings: ³⁄₅ — lacked salt, nice crisp on them. They were 6 dumplings per order. Not bad.
Kimbap: ³⁄₅ — rice was a little soft. Overall okay. Nothing great to say but nothing bad to say either.
Service was not great. Our server seemed indifferent to us and was not super friendly.
Final say? I would rather go to Bonchon for Korean fried chicken, and make dumplings at home. Would mot die to come back for kimbap.
Maybe I would come back to try their sampler. Maybe not.

I never thought I’d give a restaurant such a low rating.
I’ll keep it short and simple. The only reason why it’s not one star is because I was with a party of 10 or so but the food still came out pretty fast. Other than that, it’s a one star restaurant. The waiter never refilled our drinks even when we asked him to. The food was alright, but the bulgogi I got tasted like straight up plastic as if they just barely unfroze the rice cakes and threw it in the dish. My friend got the chicken and at least that tasted decent.
Now, I’m not someone that gets mad easily. It’s actually really hard to get on my bad side. But what happened at the end made me so mad I told myself I’m never coming back here. As we all got our checks, I asked the waiter for a box for my food. (Even though it was a dish for Barbie since it tasted like plastic, I wanted to bring it to my brother and his roommates.) We got our checks back ten or fifteen minutes later and I politely ask again since he may have forgotten. Twenty more minutes pass as we’re all talking and I realize he still hasn’t brought me the box yet. Almost everyone leaves except my car and I ask him for it one last time before my car leaves too. He said he’ll get it. But I watched him, and all he did was go behind the counter and go on his phone. He didn’t even bother getting a box for me. If they didn’t offer boxes, then he could’ve at least told me. Otherwise, I have no idea what he was thinking.
Probably not going here again.

Guys that’s really an AVERAGE place to grab Korean-​street style snacks. Especially there wings! I had one called Holic wings, it supposed made by there house special sauce or whatever, but it was BLENDED!!! If you craving for wings, and you happened to be in Annandale, please go to Bön Chon or else where, not recommended for this place.

This is definitely a place to come if your a college student! maybe not but it has that feel. Korean bar food, fast food. Cold beer, fried food, spicy, hot and nice combos. Great price.
I had the combo meal with 3 beers. It was perfect for thr hubby and I. The table next to us were a group of 10 and had chicken too. It looked good. Fun place. Food is ok… but what do expect its street food.

Updating my review just to let everyone know that they don’t sell any soondae items or any set/​combo plates you see in these Unilocal photos. They just have kimbap, noodles, toppokki, wings, dumplings, and tempura. Which isn’t too bad but it was nice when we were able to buy a set meal.
I specifically came here to eat soondae but that didn’t work out. I was a little confused at first and thought I misheard our waiter saying that they don’t have soondae anymore since it was still clearly in the menu… So he repeated it for me stating that they don’t have the holic sampler or any soondae items anymore. What a real bummer.
Beware.
— — — — — — — — — —
So they definitely have soondae & their plates again. their Holic sampler price went up by a couple dollars but it’s okay! Just happy that it’s back.

My GPS was a little confused on the location of this place but eventually I found it. This place is a cute basement of a pool hall building, totally reminds me of being back in Korea. Friendly enough, ordered the assortment of kimbap, ddukbokki, mandu. good price for the amount of food they give you, I also got a katsu on the side, big mistake me and my friend couldnt finish all of the food and rice cake dosnt keep that well haha.
Great place to splurge on some fried food, Came on a rainy weekday and it wasnt busy at all.

Came here for lunch with the family and I was very exited because I’ve been wanting to try this place because of the sampler that I see everyone posting. Sat down and our server brought us out water, plates, and utensils. Tried to order the sampler but he said they no longer do the «set menu». I said what does that mean. Couldn’t really understand him but basically you have to order everything individually. I really wanted the sampler because you get a little bit of everything… Ok so we tried to order the Alfredo dish and he says they don’t have that either and a few other things they don’t that is on the menu. We ended up ordering the spicy rice cake, bulgogi kimbap, and the holic fried chicken. The food was okay not something to be excited over but I’m glad I tried this place to get it over with. It was pretty empty in here.

The good: the wings.
The bad: the rest of the menu.
The ugly: the service.
Not worth the groupon.

Red Holic is a street-​food inspired Korean restaurant in Annandale. I’ve come here a few times with my brother and my non-​Korean friends.
What I got
— Kimbap, $ 4.99
What I thought
— A good price for a simple dish. Nothing fancy or exciting.
Korean food in general is sparse with vegetarian dishes, so I opted for the simple kimbap. My friends got the bulgogi ddukboki, bulgogi rice, and mandu. These are all simple and well-​known dishes. It’s a great place to introduce friends to Korean food. I particularly like the set menu, or platters, which is on the first page of the menu. Korean food is meant to be shared with the entire table, so with these platters, you can try a bunch of different tastes in the same meal. There are groupons out there, so try to snag one of those if you can.

Was so excited to try this place after seeing pictures and just wanted some super delicious Korean food!
Everything was just okay. Kind of bland, lacking flavor, just okay.
Even the fried chicken. Got half and half of the spicy tangy sauce and the soy. Both were also super bland.
Overall, definitely worth the price. $ 19.99 for the huge sampler but nothing was amazing. Would go back if I was super craving this type of food.

Portions are more than enough, food was extremely affordable, and service was fair. However, food was nothing memorable or special.
Since s/​o and I were craving soondae, we decided to come here with a bunch of his friends as a sort of mini reunion. this establishment DOES take reservations so call ahead of time if you’re coming in with a big group. They said us in the back and it was like a private room. they were more than accommodating when we had to push back our reservation from 7pm to 7:30pm, props to them (:
among all of us we got the holic sampler, regular fried chicken, soy sauce chicken, tonkatsu, and dumplings.
the sampler consisted of some sort of salad in the middle (part spicy, part mayonnaise– WHY), kimbap, soondae, fried tempura, and dukbokki.
The dukbokki was fantastic, good heat, pretty spicy if you ask me but I have low tolerance, the kimbap was not bad either, and it tastes really good if you dip it in the dukbokki sauce. What fell short for me was the soondae, which was what I was really looking forward to. It easily crumbled, making it hard to pick up, and it tasted very mashed and broken up.
The soy sauce chicken (per friends) was apparently very tasty, however the regular fried chicken fell extremely flat with little to no flavor. The tonkatsu was ginormous, while heavy, was very flavorful, however there was something artificial about it.
Servers were attentive and able to accommodate all our requests and needs. Would come back for a quick fix

+ Cheap
+ Great place to grab a quick bite
+ Free Wifi!!!
+/​-​Simple dishes that don’t excel in taste or flavors, however it meets the standards
If you’re in the mood for some quick Korean food and you don’t want to spend a lot of money, this is the place to be. I came around 7PM on a Friday night and there was no wait, which was nice. We started the meal with some clear soup, while we waited for our Kim Bap/​Spicy Rice Cake combo platter and our Bulgogi. The bulgogi was a little tough and chewy, but it wasn’t that bad. The rice cake was also on the firm side, but the kim bap was pretty good.
Side note: I read some older reviews about free coffee. The coffee is no longer free, but it’s apparently only 25 cents!

I love this place for three main reasons.
1.) the food is super cheap. They have half off chicken during one day of the week!
2.) their platters full of different Korean street foods. The platter is massive! And when I say massive I mean big enough for four people to share as not only an appetizer, but a meal. These platters are about 25 $ or maybe a little bit more. (I will upload my picture of this platter, so you can take a look at what I mean!)
3.) their fried chicken. They fry the whole chicken but cut it into individual pieces. Oh my god, the sauce on their chicken is bomb dot com. It is amazing and just finger licking good. I love the sauce because it’s sweet, tangy, salty, and spicy. All the flavors you would ever want all in one delicious bite. The skin on the chicken is crispy and has a great bite.
You have to eat here because the food is cheap, delicious and out of the world massive.

It’s been a couple of years since I have last visited Red Holic. At that point they were a new establishment and the food was short from memorable. Fast forward to 2015; they have a taken a huge step in the right direction and I will be visiting more often if I am craving some snack food. This isn’t the place to visit if you are looking for galbi, jiggae, etc. you get my drift.
Between 3 other people we ordered the mayak kimbap, dduboki, fried dumplings and fried chicken (regular and spicy). I will start with my favorite– the kimbap was delicious and coming in at a close second was the regular fried chicken. Typically I don’t like Korean style fried chicken but the version they serve here at Red Holic is excellent. The chicken was very juicy. On that note, the spicy fried chicken was more on the wet side so I wasn’t a huge fan of this. I eat about just everything but ddukboki is something I don’t really like. So I won’t comment on that dish personally, however everyone else at the table seemed to enjoy this dish very much.
Don’t expect good service here– the waitresses will take your order and bring out the food. You won’t see them again until you request your check. Luckily there is a water machine you can refill your own water located near the coffee machine. With that in mind if you are looking for a quick bite this is a great place to visit.