Fans of Korean barbecue have a new place to get their grill on. Bae Korean Grill opened this month in the retail wing of the expanded Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood.
The 175-seat restaurant is dark, chic and clubby, featuring a bar and lounge with a DJ booth and 28 tables with in-table gas grills for do-it-yourself cooking of premium meats, seafood and vegetables. The dining rooms also feature 10 non-grill tables for those who’d rather solely order items prepared in the kitchen. The restaurant is owned and operated by Bol Hospitality, the same group behind the Bol restaurants at the Hard Rock and Seminole Coconut Creek Casino.
“There aren’t that many Korean barbecue places in South Florida so this just made sense,” says Bol Hospitality partner Eric Douglas. “We figured let’s open a higher-end restaurant that will appeal to both tourists and locals.”
He says the menu is a mix of “interactive dining dishes, chef-created Korean dishes and some Asian fusion” items. “That ability to be involved in the preparation of your food brings excitement, a certain energy,” Douglas says.
The restaurant is located near the Oculus rotunda at the recently opened Guitar Hotel and features dramatic oversize red doors, a sleek, black interior and furnishings that include several Buddha statues. Douglas says the entrance will soon have new decor — a statue of a Korean warrior on a white horse. The restaurant was designed by Larry Lee & Associates, the same group that designed the new Council Oak steakhouse at the Hard Rock.
“Bae is Korean for an Asian pear, and it’s a symbol of prosperity and fertility,” Douglas says. Asian pear is being used in cocktails and some dishes.
Douglas says the restaurant has been doing well since its Jan. 9 opening but that there has been a learning curve as guests learn the intricacies of cooking on built-in Shinpo grills. The sunken gas grills feature a “downdraft system” that pulls smoke into elaborate ducts that run beneath tables and up through disguised “smokestacks” that look like decorative columns in the dining room. Many Korean barbecue restaurants have clunky hoods that are pulled down over tables.
“These are more efficient and aesthetically pleasing,” Douglas says. They’re also complicated, he says, with seven components broken down and cleaned every night after service.
DIY items include a seasonal vegetable medley ($15), filet mignon ($37), Berkshire pork belly ($23), beef tongue ($30), marinated kalbi ($32), rib eye ($45), 45-day dry aged rib eye ($85), A5 Japanese Wagyu strip steak ($120 for four ounces), lamb chops ($45), shrimp ($25), baby octopus ($25) and chicken ($17 thighs, $18 breast).
Executive chef Xavier Torres, who previously worked at Drunken Dragon in Miami Beach and Zuma in Miami, heads a kitchen that creates traditional Korean dishes such as bulgogi ($30), stone pot bibimbap ($21), kimchi fried rice ($22), seafood pancake ($18), mandu dumplings ($16-$18) and Korean fried chicken ($16).
Douglas, who is part Native American and part Vietnamese, has been involved in businesses at the Hard Rock since its 2004 opening, starting as a nightclub operator (Spirits, Opium) before founding Bol Hospitality in 2013. He also has opened a Davidoff Cigar retail store with a hidden speakeasy/cigar lounge in the new Guitar Hotel retail complex.
His backstory is interesting: He grew up on the Shinnecock reservation near Southampton, N.Y., a tribe with 1,700 members, and attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Douglas says there were only two Native American students among 10,000 undergraduates at the school while he attended. The other was Seminole tribal member Max Osceola. They became friends and eventually business partners in Spirits nightclub.
“To this day my tribe struggles — I come from a place where two or three generations still live together under one roof,” Douglas says. “The amount of pride that the Seminoles have created by giving opportunities to other tribes and entrepreneurs like me is just tremendous.”
Bae Korean Grill, 5711 Seminole Way (Unit 100 in new retail corridor at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel Casino), Hollywood. 954-248-5946, BaeGrill.com. Open daily at 5 p.m. with grill tables open until 10 p.m. (11 p.m. Thursday-Saturday), kitchen until 11 p.m. (midnight Thursday-Saturday) and bar until midnight (2 a.m. Thursday-Sunday).
