Zeller Zone Karaoke & Bar

We had a blast at Zeller Zone for a friend's birthday. If you are new to karaoke, you might feel shy driving so perilously close to signs with no english words on them. Don't. You need to expand your mind, and you are so close to nirvana. The thrill of mindlessly searching a 6 inch thick binder of songs, while your friends belt out disgusting versions of Blaze of Glory awaits. Do NOT pass up the soju, but make sure to tell the bartender to stop pouring them at some point.

Added bonus - from this location, you are within walking distance of:

1] Murky river bottoms fit to throw any number of corpses from your drug deal gone wrong
2] The Institute for Creation Research
3] The Lodge
4] LB Houston. Horsies!

So my friends and I wanted to go to Family Karaoke but they were completely packed...like you got to park at the Korean restaurant next door packed. One of my friend's remembered that there was another place down Royal. We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived to a virtually empty parking lot. We were immediately given a room to comfortably accommodate our party of 8. We ordered some drinks and starting queuing up some songs. We're getting our drink on and singing our songs. All was good until the end of the night. We closed out and the damage was $120. We tried to pay with multiple credit cards and were given an emphatic no by the cashier. After much discussion, I convinced her to let us use 2 cards. We signed our receipts and started to head out. Then the cashier started to make a big fuss. We went back to her b/c we didn't quite understand what she was was saying. Her English wasn't great and none of us spoke Korean. She kept saying there was a problem. She said that we put a line through the tip section and that we needed to give a tip. My friends and I tip when it's appropriate but not at karaoke...especially when no one came in to provide any service. What kind of person has the audacity to demand a tip a like that? One of my friends got pretty annoyed and threw a $20 down and we left. And now we understood why one karaoke place would be completely packed and one completely empty when they were a less than 5 min apart. I'm' definitely not coming back here again. I'll just have to remember to reserve a room at Family next time.

Zeller Zone is laughably bad. It is located in the charming Koreatown area off of Royal Ln but somehow manages to look shadier than every other establishment there. It is even worse once you get inside, with tiny rooms that were littered with filth. The sound is awful and seemed to be shaking the walls apart. You had to strain to hear the music over the sound of the vibrations the speakers were causing.

After about 30 minutes we had enough and went over to Family Karaoke.