TBA
Brothers BBQ
The newly opened Citeadrinks location in Westwood is pretty good. Nice renovation of the old Junbi space, with more of a wood/earthy feel. Three ordering kiosks (vs. two) is a nice upgrade, and while there is a decent amount of seating inside, it's also still not a large space, so I can imagine it filling up quickly. Like so many of the current fad of imported-from-Asia tea chains, they lean hard into advertising the quality of their tea.
They have the famous duck s*** oolong tea, but as it was late in the day, I passed on the tea and went for a mango sago pomelo instead, which was pretty good. A proper evaluation will have to wait for at least one more visit, but initial signs are promising.
Dinner the next day at Brother's BBQ, to celebrate Jason's birthday. Madison, Maureen, Eric, and Petula all joined, and we had a very, very average meal of AYCE kbbq. Service was very good, it was nice they had (affordable and valet only) parking, with a good spread of ordinary-looking but quite tasty banchan. However, while the brisket was nicely marbled, the overall quality of the meats was best described as undistinguished. Not sure a single cut stood out to me as memorable.
Again, hard to fault them too much, but in a competitive market like k-town, it takes some extra effort to stand out. The base $49.99 "silver" menu here, which included galbi, wasn't a bad price point, but to get beef tongue you had to step all the way up to the top $9.99 "diamond" menu, which semed a little crazy. Still, good to celebrate Jason's birthday with friends and coworkers. Happy Birthday, Jason!