Cafe Tu Ah

This place is only worth going to if you have 10+ people to splurge on a private room… an evening there with a bunch of pitchers, shots, food, and room rental will run you about $ 50 – 60 bucks a person. For awesome karaōke and unbridled shenanigans this place is great. Food and beverage service is decent to very quick and staff is friendly and patient with large parties… If you order food, order the fried chicken!!! The down-​side is, the actual karaōke system can freeze up from time to time (they are very quick to fix though), and they also haven’t updated their song lists since probably 2010 with 90% of the songs they have being classics form 1990 and back… still who doesn’t love singing the classics?!

$ 35 for a medium size room and $ 45 for a large room. If you spend $ 150 they will give you two hours free. Sounds great but the drinks are expensive. Also the owner was very pushy in getting into our room early when we told him we were waiting for more people. We asked for water and they gave bottled water and charged us $ 17 for it. Overall, expensive and pushy customer service. If they have better customer service and cheaper prices, maybe people will consider coming back.

they charge $ 35 per hr for a karaōke room or i think you get an hour free if you purchase like $ 70 plus of food. well that’s not why it’s getting a one star rating.
i came here a while back with my friend and we literally sang for 2 hours and 5 minutes (we tried to make it 2 hours flat but that didn’t work out obviously lol)
anyway, the waiter charged us for AN ENTIRE THREE HOURS. i’m sorry but why charge us for three if we only used up an extra 5 minutes? do they not know how to calculate and charge us FOR OUR ACTUAL TIME?!
that was completely ridiculous. so we got charged for time we weren’t going to use, that we didn’t want to use, because we were not about to stay for another 55min (or worse, if we were actually 1 min over they would probably charge us for an extra hour).
it is completely unfair, and a complete ripoff. they are going to lose business this way thinking they can do this to costumers. i would give this place 0 stars if i could.

Been here few times before while back. I went back last nite with my sis and my bf to grab some drinks. Since it was new year’s eve, there was no customers. My bf opened his menu and to look at combo specials. Omg! We saw baby cockroaches crawling out of the menu. We were so disgusted and left right away! My bf informed one of the waiter. Will not go back!!!

I’ve been here with a group of friends several times. This place as a bar is «interesting». It’s definitely not my first choice for happy hour or somewhere to start the night because it’s always dead when I come in. But one of my friends in our group loves coming here for the fried chicken. I’ve had a lot of fried chicken all over the country so I just had to try it here. The fried chicken was heavenly. They have elevated the classic southern fried chicken. SO. GOOD.
Overall — the service is okay and the only food I’ve had here is the fried chicken. The drinks are pretty expensive but as long as they have that phenomenal fried chicken, I won’t hesitate to come back. So if you come here for any reason, it should be the fried chicken.
… did I mention the Fried Chicken is amazing?

some say this place was dead. but you have to understand that this is a karaōke joint with private
most patrons there sing inside the private karaōke rooms and not seen from people who hang around the bar/​restaurant
a result it might give an impression that there’s no one there when you first walk in.
overall place looks descent inside and pretty simple and clean. i did not use their private karaōke room so i can’t comment on that. their price of food is little expensive though. but that’s usually the case with this type of karaōke
somewhere else if you are a budget minded person.

They charged $ 35/​hour for the private karaōke rooms, which my friends and I enjoyed, but the service was HORRIBLE. The seated us when we first got there and brought us a round of drinks, and then, we never saw anyone, again. My friend ordered a drink as he brought us bottles of water (which is not what we meant when we asked for «4 waters» — they just wanted to be able to charge us $ 2.50/bottle), but her drink never came. We were going to order food, but no one came back. After a couple hours, we had to go look for someone so we could pay. When I only tipped 6% (and I think that was generous for how we were treated). the waiter had the audacity to come back with a bad attitude and tell me he thought I ‘made a mistake on the tip,’ because he thought it was too low. I thoroughly explained why the tip was not a mistake. I will never go back there.

The fried chicken was amazeballs!

I love this place, I go about once a month, I call it The Random Asian Bar. I met Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Filipinos, and a Singaporean. Since everyone is from everywhere, mostly English is spoken. If you see a token Gweilo setting at the bar drinking Yuengling say ‘Hi”.

Stopped by on Saturday night for an impromptu small gathering. We didn’t sing so I can’t comment on that.
The place was completely dead. The bartender was nice and kept the popcorn flowing and drinks are reasonably priced. The place was meh.
Their fried chicken, though, let me tell you, was ridiculously good. It was so good I almost died. GET THE FRIED CHICKEN.

I’ve been a big fan of Korean-​style karaōke bars every since I spent a year+ there courtesy of the US Army. We’d been threatening to go to this place for awhile, and finally organized an outing for my wife’s birthday.
If you’re there for karaōke, the place is great. We booked a room about a week in advance because we had a large group (20 people). I wouldn’t go any larger than that unless you plan on reserving more than one room.
The music selection was solid, with plenty of standards (we’re all big fans of The Beatles, Queen, and Elvis) as well as plenty of more recent music. The wait staff was extremely attentive, and catered to our every whim.
Overall, we had a blast, and for a group of 20 people, the bill was extremely reasonable. The only downside: if you plan on ordering food, it tends to be on the expensive side. But drinks were definitely reasonable.
We’ll definitley be back.

The bartenders here are weird. Really weird. Like hooking for tips weird.
A few friends and I decided to get together the day before Christmas Eve to bust out a few Wham tunes and shake off the holiday stressfulness. We entered the bar and realized that there was going to be wait for a private karaōke room so we decided to just sit at the bar.
The waitresses were outrageously flirty, opting to move behind the bar to sit right next to the obviously taken guys to hold deep conversations with them making all of us feel deeply uncomfortable. When one of the bartenders learned of my recent engagement (BTW IM ENGAGED Y’ALL!!!) she grabbed my hands, stared at my ring, and started telling me about her recent divorce and how sad love was. Umm… more soju please?
Every time I ordered a drink the waitress kept trying to talk to me in Filipino even though I told her that I do not speak Tagalog.
The whole experience was really odd but I rolled with the punches and had a good time (thank goodness for alcohol right?). When I paid my tab, the head bartender (who seemed really nice and normal) apologized (we didn’t complain at all but maybe she saw the bewildered look in our eyes) and promised that they would treat us better next time.
My boyfriend (fiancé!!!) promised me that we will NEVER go to that place again but honestly… curiosity has gotten the best of me and there will probably be a next time.
PS: $ 20 for soju cocktails… enough for 12 shots!

Well. It’s a noraebang. The fact is that it does have an exterior bar area as well as private singing rooms. The rooms are clean and the songs are current.
The service is prompt and you can get backup singers at an additional cost. It is $ 35 an hour but free if you order over$ 150 worth of anju (Korean apps) and drinks.
Best noraebng in annandale at the moment.

okay. since my friend has been complaining all night about this place, i must write up a review.
okay… so we went on a Saturday night for a friends birthday.
this was our 2^nd round right after Honey Pig. she was already complaining about dinner so this had to be the icing on the cake.
well… first off, it was dead. c’mon it’s Saturday night, where all the people at???
apparently, not here!
we got a room to do karaōke. we ordered yogurt soju and the dry anju plate (came with peas, dried octopus, and squid)
yogurt soju was good…
the karaōke was fun, the birthday girl gave us a free concert.
they didn’t have many of the songs we were looking for though…
we played for a good two hours and i think my friend was drunk because she left her credit card.
we were outside thinking of where to go for third round when the worker ran out with her card and then gave her the bill saying she didn’t leave tip.
she was flabbergasted because she is a big tipper but she just forgot because she was a little tipsy. but then it was rude that he asked for tip.
uhhh oh well. koreans are just rude like that. haha.
but ultimately i don’t think i’d go back.
not because of the tip asking worker, but because it was dead and not a very exciting atmosphere.

This place is a bar/​restaurant/​karaōke room place. it’s pretty cool. I wouldn’t go here again unless my friends wanted to go there. The service is good, the singing is good. it’s definitely someplace you’d want to go to play, but as i said in my review for damoim, i’m biased because of my experiences in seoul and LA. It’s got a korean beer house type feel too it. dark interiors and all, wood paneling, etc. I guess I was in the mood for something cheerier.
Anywhooo. The biggest disappointment regarding this place is the chicken. Everyone raves aboot the chicken which they call «tong dak». but it’s not really tong dak. it’s friend chicken. tongdak is like a big buffalo wing sans sauce. fried up with no batter. you rip it apart and dip the pieces into a mixture of pepper and salt. Anyway, for fried chicken, it was pretty good. but it wasn’t as good as BBQ.

Best fried chicken anywhere… K F C — if you’ve never had it before … Korean Fried Chicken… is definitely a sin worth indulging in.
I used to go to Tuah every day practically in 2008… met my current girlfriend there, who bartended til the end of 08. But personal biases put aside, the food alone makes me want to go back.
Louis Kay, the owner of the bar, has been in the restaurant business in Annandale for 25 or 30 years… he owned the old Jin Sung Garden across from K Mart… and sold it and went into the bar grill business. Jin Sung is now a Korean/​Chinese gourmet? JangWonBanJum? I believe.
I moved back to LA now and live in the heart of Koreatown, with more bars, cafes, and KFC’s than anyone in Annandale could ever dream of… with delivery no less… but I do miss Café Tuah chicken.

Came here for a few beers after Café Noir on a Friday night. I thought it was pretty comfortable and wouldn’t mind coming back again.

The good old Tu-​Ah days. The food is a-​ok and the drinks prices are average. They were slow to follow the $ 9.99 soju bottle trend but they eventually caved. Back when I used to go frequently, the bartenders were horrible bartenders. Always looking in books to get the drinks right. And even after looking at the book they mixed drinks there were horrible. Thankfully I am not a mixed drink person at all. Except for Gin or Vodka Tonics.
The food is overall very good. Tong-​Dak is good although it’s not cooked in the traditional roasted fashion. There’s only a couple other chicken places I prefer over Tu-​Ah and that’s BonChon and Red Rooster in Damascus, MD. The Dubu Kimchi is excellent and almost everything I had on the menu was very good. Although I have NO idea why butter corn for 10 bucks in on the menu.
The atmosphere. They play a good balance of Kpop and American music. They have multiple TVs there and they will turn the channel at your request. We often went to see fights on HBO or Showtime. And college football matches got a lot of play there.

To be totally honest I don’t know what constitutes «tong dak». It’s definitely Korean-​prepped chicken. But I’ve heard people say tong dak when referring to BonChon chicken, roasted chicken, and breaded fried chicken.
I was dragged here by someone craving tong dak. I thought she meant the roast chicken — so I was not very excited. Saw the exterior and was already hating the place. We went inside — I was hoping the horrible interior would persuade us to leave. Music was way too loud and the place was darker than Houston’s.
But.
The tong dak was good. Really good. I stopped whining. It was a simple deep-​fried breaded chicken. It was crisp and juicy. Perfectly seasoned — nothing too fancy but mouth-​wateringly tasty. Came with two different dipping sauces. Both spicy. One more vinegary and another more sriracha-​ish. The chicken was served piping hot.
The wait staff was helpful. They even turned up the lights for us. I should note we were there just after opening (530pm) and were one of only 3 parties being served.

Tacky! The food was alright, the service was pretty good, but everything else about this place was completely tacky.
Let’s start with the décor. The dark wood is nice, the ambient lighting — fine. But they’ve got white AND multi-​colored Christmas lights all blinking at random! And they’ve got these sparkly things hanging from the ceiling probably to give the place some pizazz — which would look fine at a place like Oya — but it just doesn’t work here.
Next, the music. Our server had to ask us to repeat things over and over again because they couldn’t hear us over the obnoxiously loud music! This is a bar & restaurant! No room for dancing. If there’s no dancing, the music should be at a reasonable volume! Why do Annandalians not understand this? (See my Ara review
)
The food was fine, but nothing special. The company was great and I don’t want to complain, but let’s not come back here, please!