Hop Woo BBQ & Seafood
$$ Chinese, Seafood
845 N Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90012
I have been here more times because of Groupon than have any other restaurant. I also have come here a lot prior to the days of Groupon. It seems like anyone who gets their MFA from an art school in Los Angeles is required to have some type of performance or exhibit in this area, hence when I run in them artistic circles, I usually end up there – then here or Hop Louie or Full House.
Their vegetarian food offers the quintessentially soggy vegetables that I’ve come to experience as being authentic at least to the way restaurants prepare them Chinatown. The mixed vegetables to schezuan eggplant to hollow vegetables from Hop Woo taste like they’re boiled with a plump texture underneath a slick layer of oil on top of them. I don’t dislike them. I just prefer how they prepare the soft tofu this way for their ma po tofu. The ma po sauce is very tasty and the dish is probably my favorite here. It tastes very salty though but for me, I like it however wouldn’t particularly recommend it for other people as I tend to like saltier saucy things.
The atmosphere is nice enough for groups but the service here is hard to describe. They don’t have bad service per se. They’re just consistently not focused on the human. I found that to be the case too when I went to a cafe on a layover in Guanzhou, China, so I think it’s just the way things are done. They’re usually as distracted by setting or bussing tables as they are taking orders, which often takes about 15 minutes to do after being seated. However they usually immediately give you tea, Spanish peanuts and crackers to munch on. I guarantee you that tea will go cold by the time they take your order so drink up first.
They’re one of a handful of places that don’t have restrictions towards how many Groupons you can use here. So they never give me a hard time about redeeming Groupon. But if you do the Groupon, print it out as they will hold onto your phone for ten or fifteen minutes while writing down the code, processing it, and simultaneously setting or bussing said tables.
Useful: 4 Funny: 0 Cool: 0
12/24/2016