Yeowoosai

-Grubbing in Chicago  
Korean Bar Food

I think I have a new go-to watering hole for the 2017 Cubs season. At the very least I have a new spot to go when I want to watch a game and eat and drink through all nine innings. I was turned onto Yeowoosai by a friend who's friend owns the place. With my friend being a Korean guy that likes to eat I immediately directed him to hit me up next time he goes here. That happened recently.

Locals Favorite in Rogers Park / Devon 

Yeowoosai is a casual lounge with food and drink. It's clientele is almost exclusively Korean and because they don't open until 6p they're most popular with the after hours crowd. On our visit the place was only half full until about 11:00 when people then started to show up in groups every few minutes. There's booth seating and also chairs along the bar where you can watch sports / KPop.

a peek inside 

The menu at Yeowoosai (I love saying it's name) is a bunch of Korean bar food classics. You won't find any burgers, pizza, or buffalo wings but they do have an extremely addictive popcorn chicken appetizer. Labeled Daktigem on the menu this is most likely the restaurants signature dish. A big plate of well fried popcorn chicken is just about the perfect drinking food for a group. The crispy pieces of mixed meat come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes assuring you this didn't come from a freezer. While the regular daktigem is good the spicy aka Maewoon Daktigem is the better of the two. It comes fried with jalepenos and onions and has a nice tangy glaze that sticks to the batter. Get the combo plate for the best of both worlds. It pairs perfect with beer.

Korean Popcorn Chicken aka Daktigem

Another perfect beer pairing is the 'Ultimate Everything' Kimchi Fried Rice. Made with pork, beef, spam, eggs, cheese etc. It's got a little bit of everything to the point where I'm probably forgetting a few of the things. A huge bowl was destroyed by our group which was four deep. The best bites being the rice that got stuck to the bottom of the bowl and thus crisped up real nice. My favorite dish of the night. I could see myself heading back here and ordering it to-go for a couple days worth food.

Ultimate Kimchi Fried Rice

Because you can never have enough kimchi in your life we also ordered a plate of Dwaeji Dubu Kimchi. This translates to something along the lines of pork, kimchi, and tofu. It's a great dish to introduce someone looking to dip their feet into Korean cuisine. Lots of stuff going on in this.

Pork, Tofu, Kimchi aka Dwaeji Dubu Kimchi

Moving on to our last round of food we soon realized we ordered entirely too much. Each dish is made to feed a table of people (the price reflects this). Though there were four of us we ended up ordering four dishes total which was going a bit overboard. Lastly was another winner by my watch. The owner suggested a spicy seafood noodle soup that was fantastic. The broth was deep in seafood flavor and there were plenty of ocean creatures up in it. While the noodles were a bit soft the broth was so addictive I ended up eating enough to make myself uncomfortable for the rest of the night. So while while I had heard about this place I always seemed to forget about it, but now that I've been I won't forget next time I'm looking to catch a Cubs game and eat some awesome food. See ya in April.

Jamppong aka Spicy Seafood Soup

Yeowoosai
6248 N California Ave
Chicago, IL 60659
(773) 465-7660