Shoubu Izakaya

Great food awesome service try the yogurt sake it was delicious rolls were good also superb service very authentic everything

NOT GOOD!
First of all, I should have known. An izakaya in ktown? And their menu has korean food, but also offers sashimi? No no no.
They have the usual overpriced alcohol menu, but we also ordered a few foods to munch on too.
Kimchi pancake– this actually wasn’t bad, but it was suuuuper thin so there wasn’t a whole lot of anything in it
Sashimi salad– the fish was frozen. In fact, it was STILL frozen when it was brought out on top of some greens. No buenos
Dukkbokki– none of us could taste anything but spice. It literally tasted like straight up gochujang. My gums were tingling, it was so spicy
The place was also pretty empty for a Saturday night (should have been another dead giveaway), yet the service was painfully slow. What gives? Stay away, there are so many better places with wayyy better food and a way more fun environment

I just ate here right now and ordered salmon sashimi. I understand this is not a traditional sushi shop or sashimi specialist but the salmon pieces I received were frozen, not fresh, and had no fat lines. I can go to the Chinese market across the street of my house and buy a salmon there and it would be more sushi-​grade than the frozen fish they sell here.
My friend also ordered the spicy ricecake and what she noticed was that there was not a lot of ricecake in her …
Avoid this place if you’re coming to eat.

I have been coming here from time to time. This bar is definitely not my favorite bar in koreatown but I do go sometimes when friends just drag me here and we don’t want to wait in lines to get seated at other bars on a weekend.
All my visits were just average. Nothing special. Though, servers are attentive and they try to work with the customers and try their best but their food is just not worth the money. I don’t remember exactly what I tried but I remember eating their Okonomiyaki and it was just OK. I definitely had better elsewhere. Since this bar is more of an Izakaya, their food is mostly Japanese or Korean-​Japanese. I am aware of the bars charging overpriced food and it’s no exception for this place also.
Their Happy Hour, however, is a pretty good deal. I don’t know exactly what time it starts, but it ends at 9:00 PM everyday including the weekends. Most of the alcohol is half priced. I also tried their Takoyaki which was pretty good. It was actually better than Honda-​Ya. Their batter outside wasn’t stale but rather crunchy. It was pretty good for the price, $ 5.99 for 5 pieces. Their Tako-​Wasabi is also good. Though the octopus itself is somewhat frozen and it is covered in ice, it’s not as bad as you think.
Oh and their restroom only has one toilet. That’s kind of inconvenient knowing this bar is pretty big. You might have to wait in lines just to use the toilet. Other than that, it’s just an average bar.

Came here for the 4^th time in so many years and I have to say, it wasn’t as good as I remembered. The sushi was frozen, the seafood pancake was smothered in sauce, the chicken skewers also smothered in sauce, & the salmon topped California rolls were so-​so. Although I like the atmosphere and service, I won’t go back for a good meal.

We were walking by and saw their Buy 1 Get 1 Free Happy Hour they have advertised outside, so we decided to give this place a try. Everything was A-​OK, until the bill came and realized the deal is very misleading.
We had ordered 2 happy hour items that were $ 16.99 and 2 smaller happy hour items that were $ 9.99 and $ 6.99. The menu said «discount taken off lower priced item». So most people would think okay I buy one at $ 16.99, get the 2^nd $ 16.99 one free, then buy one at $ 9.99 and get the $ 6.99 one free. But nope, when the bill came, they had charged us for the two $ 16.99 items. I thought it was an error so I politely asked our server about it. She however, was completely straight up RUDE about it. She says the menu says discount taken off lower priced items, but obviously if I knew it meant the lowest priced items from the bill as a whole, I would have ordered more expensive items. Why would I order the 9.99÷6.99 items when I could have ordered 2 other $ 16.99 dishes for the same price? It just doesn’t make sense. So I said, «Well what if I want two separate checks then? I want to pay for the two 16.99 items on a separate check and the 9.99÷6.99 on another check» and she says, «Well we can’t separate the checks anymore, so you’ll just have to do that next time» in an extremley sarcastic fake tone. Such BS! If she at least explained it in a polite tone, then I would’ve been alright whatever, but she was just being a complete beeetch.

Came here last week with
My owner and friends and
Ordered there sashimi
The red snapper was nice
And brown, had one bit
And had to spit it out
My owner didn’t even try it
Was so embarrassing
To bring him there
I hop they get better fish
Since they are in a very
Nice spot in k-​town !

Nice spot in K-​Town to drink.
Decent sized restaurant. Service is nice.
Unilocal offers free edamame with drinks.
Did not eat so I cannot rate the food. I only drank soju and beer.
A cool random spot to drink if ever in K-​Town.

Sad from beginning to end. We walked in on a whim and the waitress told us to sit curtly. We sat down, looked at the happy hour menu and proceeded to order the worst sushi we have had in Los Angeles. The spicy tuna was sweet with mayo, the rice was dry and hard, we didn’t finish any of the rolls we ordered.
Maybe good for other things… Not willing to try.

OK, I would have given this restaurant a 2 stars, however I feel that it should get the 3 stars only because the food was not half bad. It was just the representation of their Happy hour deal. I was extremely confused, and the server did not bother telling us when we were there after we had already mentioned that it was our first time there. We were told that each dish was buy 1 get 1 free on certain dishes, which was fine with me. So we ordered 4 dishes and a soju, but of course 4 large dishes between 2 women is far too much food. At the end we requested if we could have a few boxes to take the food home, and were denied. 0_​o was the face that my friend and I made. The food was ok, and they had a mixture of japanese/​korean food which was not too bad, and if we were in a bigger group the happy hour deal would be better for us. If you are looking to drinking/​eat with a bunch of friends, check this place out. ENJOY!
PS: The sashimi isn’t that fresh, so just be aware.

O wow people do not like this place lol.
Well whatever, maybe a 4 stars is too eager, but I had a good time the one time I’ve been. The 5 of us were actually waiting to eat at Boiling Crab (1.5 hour wait yikes) and my friend found this place. Happy hour was extremely cheap, aaaand… we were the only ones there lol. Seriously.
I think there was a minimum of $ 10 a person, so we got a few fuckloads of beer and soju, and we were all chillin and relaxin while waiting for our table… and we still had 3 bottles of beer and 2 bottles of soju with like 20 minutes left. What the… That’s when the shit show began. We pretty much finished them all in that amount of time and had ourselves a drunk ol time at BC.
YAY! It was fun though heheheh.

Yummy Korean food!!! They also serve sushi here. This Is one of my favorite spots in ktown to go to. They have happy hour from 6 – 9 everyday. Food and drinks are 50%. The servers are great and attentive. Always a nice ambience.

Happy hour menu 50%
Service — 1.2 stars
Ambience — 3.1 stars
Clean — 2.2 stare
Restroom — 2.0 stars
Parking — 1.2 stars

WOW. Because we became so fond of this place, we decided to come here and have a couple drinks to end the night. We waited 20 minutes to get seated, but we made it 10 minutes before happy hour ended at 10PM. So we ordered a soup dish with the large sake. We chitchatted away and around 11PM we asked for our check…
Our bill was $ 50… It turns out we didn’t get the 50% off. So we called one of the waitresses and asked her why we didn’t get the discount. She so nonchalantly said, «Oh, the happy hour is until 9PM.» so we asked her since when, and she replied saying it’s been awhile. So we ask how long and she says, «it’s been a week.» and walks off.
UMMMMM it has not been a week since last weekend when we were here 2 days in a row! All of us felt so cheated… they didn’t even notify us when we were ordering, and not all menu had the changed happy hour time since the waitress had to dig through the menus when we asked where the changed time was written on the menu.
Even if they extend the happy hour time BACK to 10PM, we will not be coming back here… I don’t like being tricked and cheated.

Came for late night drinks, had soju and a carafe of yogurt soju cocktail. The cocktails can normally get too sweet, so soju is necessary! IT was a quick drink and bouncing to the next spot.
They serve food, but we didn’t try any.
Similar to majority of Korean bars, this place can get smokey. But why I can’t stand this place — there’s only ONE bathroom for the entire spot. Especially the woman’s bathroom. C’mon drinking + one bathroom = crazy lines.
Across the street from Gaam/​ToeBang/​Bliss plaza. Parking is $ 2 with validation, valet only. (across the street) — shhh, we went to a few places that night! I’m pretty sure they have their lot as well too.

Four redeeming qualities about this place, each which amounts to ½ stars.
1. Happy Hour extends from 5 to 10PM which means 50% off on all items and drinks except those on the first page with bar-​eat appetizers and sashimi.
2. Valet Parking available for $ 2.00 with validation. No apparent time limit for parking.
3. The seafood soup with crispy rice is phenomenal. Warm, comforting, savory and filling, all the characteristics brought about by various morsels of seafood and puffy rice kernels. Yum! I would come back to Shoubu just for this soup. I know… weird.
4. Good place to chat with friends because there’s so much space! Plus there are separate sections for smokers and non-​smokers so yay!
Overall food was meh. Our group of three ordered the spicy chicken breast, which tasted like fried chicken strips doused in sweet and spicy dukkbokki sauce, and the red snapper with garlic sauce, which were cut up into small pieces and fried poorly, thus yielding to a soggy crust. Flavors were decent. The food probably would have tasted better if we were tipsy… so drunchie food.
The biggest thing that got to me was that the staff was rude. We had this one chick who maybe wasn’t having the best day or perhaps hated her job, but my goodness, get your act together. She was curt, rude, and almost condescending whenever we asked questions regarding the menu. She basically gave the very bare minimum service and made it difficult to order (apparently we have to order alcohol to order food from HH) and made it difficult to ask for water refills. Gah. So highly annoyed.
It was cute that the place was decorated for Halloween and the staff were dressed up as well. Maybe the waitress was unhappy because she had no Mario for her Luigi get-​up.
All in all, don’t think I’ll be coming back here any time soon. Hmm.

Very loud, extremely hectic enviroment… Never tried their happy hour servings — that may require a second trip.
Overall, I didn’t find anything EXCEPTIONAL about this place in regards to drinks, prices, or service.
To me, it just seemed like another place serving drinks in K-​town.

I’ve been having bad luck dining in ktown.
We came here to drink with buddies, which the main reason people come here – but for food, i highly suggest not getting anything less that fried at this location. My friend ordered the raw octopus, and it was served semi frozen. When we asked the waitress, she said it has to be semi frozen/​cold because if it was room temperature, it would have a fishy taste, and she offered fix it by describing how she would scrape the sides of the raw octopus container that is apparently more thawed so we could enjoy our dish. I appreciated her transparency, but sometimes I don’t want to know what happens behind those double doors.
And when they are busy, don’t bother pressing the service button at the table, just raise your hand.

Came here last night around 11. Wasn’t that crowded though there were plenty of drunkass people downing soju like water. Service is meh, they were super pushy about ordering alcohol and then ahnju (food) like it was a goddamn rule. What if I just wanted soda or something? It weirded me out that the waitresses were trained to confront customers with WHAT ALCOHOL DO YOU WANT as soon as I sat down.
Bf and I ordered a small mango soju which is ok and super sweet. Btw, they use syrup to sweeten all their cocktail sojus, the waitress told us when I tried to order kiwi (she said it’s too syrupy and gross). We also ordered a yakisoba to share which was just meh.
The absolute worst thing about this place is the smoking indoors thing. There was this douche that kept chain smoking at the next table and if I never needed to get a job or something I would’ve punched him in the back of his head and just taken the felony or misdemeanor. It’s SUPER annoying that they let people smoke inside which is ILLEGAL. Anyways, don’t go here, you leave smelling absolutely disgusting since you are in a plume of disgusting cigarette smoke nonstop for hours. They REALLY need to do something about this.
Also, they mistakenly gave and charged us for a large mango soju which I complained about. My bf and I didn’t even finish half of the jug and I told her we were very clear about ordering a small and asked why we would even order a large when its the two of us? She fixed it and we paid and left. The waitresses here are really not bright and enable illegal smoking, not coming back!

I always get nervous when I see a deal written in another language so I ask the staff multiple times to make sure I know what I’m getting. Until 10PM is an amazing happy hour with 4 pages worth of food and a minimum of two alcoholic drinks for 4 people.
This is what we ordered:
Makgeolli
Hite
Spicy Seafood Noodles — (Sweet/​Spicy Wok Fried Udon)
Dukboki — (Spicy rice and fish cake)
Braised Pork Belly with Soy Sauce — AMAZING
Beef, Fries and Cheese — A little strange, but a fun bar dish
And it came out to $ 50 for 4 people. Are you kidding me?! What a steal.
I’m coming back for sure and getting the Seafood Okonimiyaki! I hear it’s the 2^nd best in LA!