Korean BBQ

Angèle, Erin and I went to a Korean BBQ today. We didn't have much choice since a lot of places were closed for Lunar New Year but we finally found a place that was open and lucky for us they had a 'half sitting on the floor' area and a 'half sitting on chairs' area which was great. I don't like sitting on the floor because you have to take off your shoes and well, having my feet close to my face while I eat isn't my favorite thing.

What is a Korean BBQ?

They have a little BBQ in the middle of each table, some are charcoal and some are natural gas. Some have a BBQ grill and others have a hot plate type surface. I prefer the charcoal with the BBQ grill however it sucks when you drop a chopstick in the fire through the grill but you look around you to see if anyone saw then you shrug it off.

You have a choice of a few meats that you can see posted on the wall in the seated areas and they bring you several side dishes that you can either cook with, use as add ons when you eat or eat just as is. They usually just bring everything to your table and place as much meat as they can on the grill and you’re on your own to do the rest but because we were foreigners that looked lost the waitress helped us along by cutting our meat in small chunks for us.

How do you eat? Well, there is no clear separation of individual foods, we all share. You pick up your chop sticks and poke at whatever you want on the table and go nuts. Picture a bowl of coleslaw and everyone’s sharing out of the same bowl with chopsticks, no word of a lie. You can also make yourself a little lettuce wrap which goes like this: 1 piece of lettuce (red leaf or some minty weird leaf) and you take a piece of meat off the grill and dip it in whatever sauce you want that we all share and you place your piece of meat on your leaf, then you place the side dishes like onions or garlic slices that you grilled with the meat or raw and you place that on your leaf and then you roll your leaf up like a fajita and you eat it all at once. Very yummy.

The only thing I don't like very much about all this is they don't clean the meat very well. You get a lot of fat with your meat and it's sometimes hard find the actual meat.

The entire meal for all 3 of us and 2 bottles of beer cost $22cnd.