Seoul House - Korean BBQ...

... Steeeee-rike one!

Nicole and I were have been talking about going for some Korean BBQ since December. We finally got together, with Adam and Alyssa, and headed to Seoul House for dinner. I was really excited for some yummy galbi and/or bulgogi, but it was not meant to be (tonight, anyway).

As I was looking through the menu to decide which protein would be my victim, everyone else ordered something other than the BBQ. By the time I made up my mind, the waitress had turned around and left. Damn! While waiting for her, I kept skimming the menu and that's when I read that the minimum order of BBQ was two orders. Daaaaaaamn!

I didn't have a 'Plan B'. In my mind, I was having Korean BBQ. After some thinking, I settled for a bento box. I found a lot of the other dishes were pretty expensive. $20 for a plate of chap jae. No freaking way! I'm guessing it was a large serving and not just a small plate. Ugh.

After all of our orders were in, the waitress came back with our banchan that included kimchi, pickled beansprouts, seaweed, and daikon, and a small serving of Korean fish pancakes.

We were given a pancake each and as you can tell by the image. If I had waited any longer, I'm sure someone would've eaten it. The kimchi was alright. I've had worse, but I've also had better. I didn't touch anything else.

Miso soup was next. There weren't any seaweed pieces in my bowl (which I don't mind), but there were two slices of mushrooms - which I ate, although I'm not a fan. Once everyone was finished with the soup, our plates of shashimi... er.. sashimi (dammit Alyssa!) and sushi arrived.

Oh, I forgot to mention what we all ordered. Adam ordered the beef teriyaki, tempura and sushi bento, Alyssa had the chicken teriyaki, tempura and sashimi bento, while Nicole chose tempura and udon combo. I ordered the beef teriyaki, tempura and sashimi bento. You've all realized that none of us ordered anything Korean. I didn't realize it until half-way into the meal. We did have the banchan, though.

Alyssa loves salmon sashimi, so she asked for a bit more salmon sashimi instead of the typical variety of salmon, tuna and white fish. What she got was a plate full of salmon sashimi. (The computers can't handle the colour of the salmon, unfortunately, so I had to desaturate it a bit.)

Adam's pretty nigiri sushi plate. Tuna on the left, I'm not sure which fish the middle one is... sea bass maybe, and then salmon.

This is my plate. I was given the same three fishes. Here's a close up of the white fish.


It was very good. Soft and buttery. Actually, they were all soft, buttery and fresh. I definitely ate too quick to enjoy the quality of the sashimi. Ah well, there's always a next time.

The time between the sashimi and sushi arriving to our main dishes was probably about 5 minutes.. and before the waitress came back, Alyssa had inhaled her all of her salmon sashimi!

Here's my beef teriyaki. It wasn't memorable.

The tempura we were all given included: two shrimp, two sweet potato and a squash tempura. These tempura were pretty light. The batter was airy, which made the batter nice and crunchy after being deep fried. They weren't really greasy either? You know when you're served tempura, but you can only eat one because it's so greasy? Well, I'm sure we could've all gone for seconds - if we weren't as full.


Instead of white rice, we were given some type of red bean rice, called sekihan (thanks AZ), but I enjoyed it. The rice was slightly sticky with a nutty taste. It could've been hotter, but oh well. Delicious!

There were also two deep fried Korean dumplings (which I'm not a big fan of) and the typical salad with citrus dressing.

I totally forgot to take pictures of Nicole's udon, but I did take a few photos of her trying to use the chopsticks to eat the udon.

For dessert, sliced watermelon - sweet and juicy watermelon! I thought it was a nice change, since it's usually slices of oranges or mints.

Overall, dinner was great. It was nice to have a fun and relaxing dinner with friends for a change. The next time I come to Seoul House, though, I'm definitely swinging toward the Korean BBQ. I'm hoping it's not another swing and a miss, but if I do get another strike, I will not hesitate to order sashimi again.

Random notes:

- There's a Katz's Delicatessen a few steps away from the Korean BBQ

- I used a 50mm 1.8 lens; I shot all of these pictures at f2 and I'm really liking how the photos turned out

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Address:

Suite 1A

3220 Dufferine Street

North York, Toronto

416-782-4405