Yeowoosai

Visiting Chicago and our friends took us here for dinner and karaōke. We ordered nachos, kimchi pancake and Dakdoritang aka the best chicken and potato stew you will ever eat in your life. The nachos were a good size: lots of chips, cheese, jalapeños, bacon, kimchi and bulgogi. The kimchi pancake we ordered with seafood but there wasn’t much seafood or kimchi. Now the Dakdoritang… Is a huge pot of crack. It was so good. And enough to feed a family. After dinner, we went next door for some karaōke. Lots of fun!

K-​Pop music videos. Football games. Grilled deliciousness and soju. YES!
Anyone that knows me can attest to my love for divey Korean hofs (drinking establishments). Anytime I go home to LA, I spend most of my days scouring through our K-​Town looking for the best deals and venues to kick back. I’m so happy that my friend recommended we check this spot out, as it filled my heart with soju happiness.
Since it was so busy, my friend and I sat at the bar and it was great. We shared two round of yogurt soju ($ 16 each) and a plate of chicken gizzards. The gizzards came topped with two sunny side eggs and was great, albeit lacking a bit of seasoning here and there. The drinks were bomb, service was good, and the atmosphere was poppin.
Everyone kept saying to try the kimchee fried rice, and it did look amazing. Alas, we were too full to order more, but I know what I will be getting next time.
Very happy that this type of place exists in Chitown. If it wasn’t so far north, I’d end up coming back more often. Until next time, keep rockin’ Yeowoosai!

I’ve got to agree with some of the other reviews here: Yeowoosai has some of the best Korean comfort food.

Korean comfort food at its best. We got a kimchi pancake that was out of this world and I got the fried tofu kimbap. Wow! They play K-​pop videos on the TVs. I could see this as being a fun place to go on a Saturday night with a bunch of friends because it’s more like a bar than a restaurant.

I come here with my friends to drink quite a bit and it’s always a good time.
Service is always pretty good. Honestly I’m not too crazy about the food and I wouldn’t come here just to eat, but since eating kind of goes along with the drinking and socializing I guess I do have a few things to say. The portions are huge and definitely meant to be split among several people. If I had to pick something to eat here it would be the popcorn chicken or the kimchi fries. Had the wings and I thought they were too sweet and sticky even for Korean style wings. I’ve also had the kimchi fried rice which is also just okay.
With that being said, I love the atmosphere here. It’s really fun. K-​Pop music videos playing all the time. Good place to go as a group and order a couple different food items and a few pitchers of flavored soju (I really like the watermelon one). This is a place where we usually start the night and end it at Sing Sing (the karaōke bar next door). Would definitely recommend if you have a group to go with!

I got food poisoning here, and within our group of 9, two others did also.
It’s Monday, two days after I ate here, and I’m still feeling crappy. That said, the food was pretty good and the service was great.

This is a hidden gem! The food is amazing and the atmosphere is great. Order anything off the menu and its enough to be shared between three. The service is excellent and the crowd is chill.

O-​fried rice was ono delicious! It’s literally kim chee fried rice with sesame oil atop with scrambled egg and ketchup. Good hangover food. Cant beat the $ 15 pitcher of flavored soju. I had the watermelon and citron which could be quite dangerous (it literally taste like juice). Good casual hangout place with loud asian music video in the background. The service was okay.

I am not stoked on this place. The kimchi fried rice took over an hour to make. Here are the ingredients: kimchi, rice, spam, eggs.
I’m not sure how this took over an hour. Also, the service was terrible. I came here for a Hawks game and it wasn’t crowded by any means. The server wasn’t attentive whatsoever– I flagged him down whenever I wanted food or a drink or anything. It seemed like I was the server and he was the customer. He was sitting at a bar with his hand around a woman – he didn’t seem to be all there… Not appropriate for work at all. The fried rice portions are massive but it’s nothing special. Just rice and kimchi. There needs to be a differentiating component in the dish to make it interesting. For $ 20. Not worth the hassle of waiting for hours to 1) be waited on 2) actually receive your food.

Came here to watch the Blackhawks game and despite the good food and great cocktails, the service was terrible. It took my friend an hour to get her kimchi fried rice — were they pickling the kimchi while we waited? It also seemed like our waiter was extremely distracted, maybe even drunk, and was flirting with women at the bar while we waited to see menus. I would’ve given even fewer stars, but the cocktails were so easy to drink and the food portions were unreal. The kimchi fried rice and kimchi nachos were great too, albeit a little spicy for my taste. Overall, it was a great value — you get a ton of food for the price. But I doubt we’ll be returning unfortunately

Not sure why people like the food here so much. The spicy ramen soup was bland, greasy and had bad frozen seafood mix, and noodles were overcooked. Same goes for the ramen. The oh-​so popular popcorn chicken was overcooked and sweet. Portions are definitely comically massive, but that doesn’t matter when the food tastes bad. Service was good though.

I came here about 3 times, and each time was fun and the drinks and the food were pretty good! I think it’s a good place to go for groups, because the foods are catered towards groups.
The only thing that deters me is that the drinks are on the pricier side, and the THE BILL INCLUDES TAX PLUS A 19% GRATUITY FEE.
I highly recommend the kimchi fried rice (various toppings, like cheese, sausages, spam) which is large enough for 4 people to munch on. 17 dollars for 4 people is not bad at all. Everything else on the menu is really delicious and comes in large quantities as well. Most of the mixed drinks like the fruity sojus are a bit weak, but I highly recommend them because they taste really good!
It’s connected to the karaōke bar, which is a fun place to just sing and be silly with your friends!
Your body might hate you for the drinks and the unhealthy food you inhaled, but you will enjoy your time at Yeowoosai!
The restaurant is heavily populated by Koreans! Make sure to come with a Korean friend if you know no Korean and you know nothing about Korean culture!

Disappointed and disappointed. Maybe it’s me. Really. Maybe I’m a bit spoiled from having tasted NY, LA and authentic Korean food in the motherland. I think this place is good for Chicago. Yeah exactly. It’s good for Chicago.
I like the fact that this is one of the few places near downtown Chicago that is open late and is next to Phở and Karaōke. I also like that fact that it is open until 1 AM during the weekdays and 2 AM during weekends. I LOVE the fact that they have Korean food on the menu that I normally enjoy.
It has a small bar by the entrance and plenty of seating. There are only 2 booth by the window so get there early if you want some natural light. It was pretty slow on Wednesday night with mostly college students who must have been friends with the bartender.
However, I was not thrilled at the quality; under-​cooked chicken, not so flavorful sauce, spicy seafood noodles with no seafood but chopped korean bacon.
I am not sure if I will return.

I bought a Groupon after reading reviews on Unilocal,etc. Best decision I ever made! My boyfriend and I went here on a Sunday night, right when the doors opened. It was very quiet in there and not too many people stopping in — we later learned that this is a late night spot so we’re definitely going to come back for that!
My boyfriend order the kimchi fried rice and I ordered the popcorn chicken and did the half and half (half original, half sweet & spicy). Both dishes were FANTASTIC! The popcorn chicken came with a spicy dipping sauce which is also delicious. The kimchi fried rice is probably the best fried rice I’ve had, hands down. Both dishes were enormous and we ended up taking over half of each dish home. Certainly worth the money as you get quite a bit! This place would be good for double dates as the dishes are large and the booths are spacious. This is also a sports bar too so if you’re looking to catch a good game or any game, this is a great spot for that. Will certainly be back!

If it were not for one of the worst waiting services I have ever experienced, I would give Yeowoosai a solid 4 stars.
I’ve been to Yeowoosai several times. All times I’ve received decent service and delicious food. My best friend loves to eat out, just like I do – so naturally I planned a surprise birthday dinner for him here!
I called two hours ahead (I came in at 8pm on a Friday), and the owner kindly reserved a table for my party of 8.
I arrived and handed them a birthday cake to bring out when we asked for the check… which I really appreciated! However, everything was pretty much downhill after that.
I came in with two other people, meaning we were waiting for 5 others, but that doesn’t excuse not being waited on. We waited literally 20 minutes (two others had shown up since) until I decided that I couldn’t take it any longer so I went up to the bar to place my order. My waiter was outside conversing with someone. The owner told the other waitress working to go fetch him; she came back empty handed and ended up taking my order for me. (How nice of her, since he was clearly not working… ever) I ordered an original popcorn chicken, ultimate kimchi bokkeumbap, and an order of budaejigae.
We waited a moderate time for our food, but we had the hardest time waving someone down to even notice us. We were placed at the furthest corner of the restaurant. I literally had to continually stand up and wave my hand to get rejected several times before someone noticed. At one point, the bartender at the other end of the restaurant noticed me before anyone else did. We constantly needed more water. It was nice that they gave us water pitchers for the table, but they were so small that they couldn’t possibly fill more than three of their tiny ass glasses.
Their service was seriously infuriating. Not only were we always low on water, our waiter took both our pitchers and didn’t bring it back for 20 minutes – everyone’s mouths were on fire. WHY DID YOU TAKE THEM AWAY? THEY WEREN’T EVEN EMPTY. I cannot even begin to explain how much my waiter sucked. Just sucked. For future reference, he is very tall and lean with long hair pulled into a ponytail. He was inattentive, the owner and the waitress served us better than he did. We ran out of gas on our gas burner for the budaejigae, and someone from our party had to walk up to the bar to get service, because clearly no one wanted to serve us. Later, he brought out our cake with the candles lit. But no plates or forks. He ended up bringing us plates, but we were so sick of trying to get his attention, that we ate our cake with chopsticks provided at the table.
All in all, the food is delicious, but our waiter was the worst waiter I’ve ever gotten. This really could be solved if they spent some money installing that nifty button at the table to notify them that we need service.

I read that the bar scene here is good so we stopped by. The bar was not exciting and It’s mainly a restaurant. The bar never got filled but the dining area was packed though.
Ordered yogurt soju and bulgogi. The bulgogi is par and nothing to rave about. Nice spot if you have a large group, but not to meet people.
The service was great and they came by a few times to check up on us.

The food was hands down awesome. Huge portions and great to share with 3 – 5 people. We had a party of 15 and they were able to accommodate all of us.
I recommend the popcorn chicken. The kinchee fried rice was still sizzling when it can out. Yum.
Loved the music videos playing in the background too.

Been here a couple times now and Yeowoosai is my new favorite bar in the area. The food and service is great! Does get quite busy here on the weekends but it’s well worth the wait. Btw, the kimchi fried rice is to die for!

This Korean bar is a hidden treasure for «bar food». The popcorn chicken with that sauce… that sauce is crack sauce! I crave this chicken dish with the side of pickled radish cubes all the time! It’s the best combo! Mmmmmm thinking about it makes me drool: P
All the food is really good and the portions are gigantic! You seriously can’t go wrong here with anything on the menu. The chicken dish I talked about earlier and their Kimchee fried rice with spam and eggs are their top sellers along with their Boodaejigae if you like spicy Korean soup.
It’s technically a bar but I go for their food. It’s got such a homey vibe to the joint that makes you feel so welcome and is a great place to chill with your friends like ‘CHEERS’. I’ve been coming here forever and it always hits the spot for a good time in my belly :) If you don’t know, you better educate yoself and find out! You won’t be disappointed, I promise ;)

I went here two times, back to back for dinner. That’s how much I liked this place the first time. Here’s what I liked. The bimbimbop was huge and delicious, with the standard ingredients and some interesting and tasty ferns. The dish was large and served hot, which helped cook up the over easy egg when you stir it in. The dish is 18 dollars, but it can easily be split between two hungry people.
I really recommend getting the popcorn chicken. It’s the best I ever had because it’s tender chicken with a crispy, flavorful batter that’s not too greasy and not too heavy. You get lots of chicken in each bite-​size morsel. We had half and half, which is half regular and half spicy. The spicy version is not too spicy, but really flavorful. If you like sweet and savory, try the spicy popcorn chicken.
The second time we tried the bbq kimchi fried rice. The bbq sauce as an interesting touch, and the serving was huge. The rice and kimchi was delicious and just a little spicy, but the potatoes were a little undercooked. Still, a delicious and heaping serving of an interesting take on kimchi fried rice. They have other varieties we are going to try for sure!
This place is a Karaōke bar in the late hours, so it was pretty dead when we went around 6 or 7. They take reservations and are pretty flexible with the times if you go before 10pm, when it gets busy. They have interesting beer options. This place is great for groups of 4 or more, and with it’s plethora of panel tvs playing sports and k-​pop music videos, there is never a dull moment. Also, our server was very friendly and welcoming, which has already convinced us to buy another Groupon to make our third visit very soon.