With a friend’s birthday fast approaching, it’s always hard to find somewhere that everyone will love. The birthday boy had been to White Tomato before and had recommended it to the group. We arrived Friday evening around 7pm and there were quite a few tables available.
ATMOSPHERE
As we had a group of 12, we had a large located on the upstairs area. When first walking in, I was surprised with how modern and industrial the space was. Located in an old Victorian style building, the restaurant featured high ceilings, exposed metal piping and brick walls. I was very impressed with the look of the space. The front leaves much to be desired; however the inside is warm and inviting yet very trendy.
FOOD
Being my first time to a Korean BBQ restaurant, it was a must to go with the full experience of the BBQ. There is the option to order your own mains and soups, or you can go with 3 choices for $$45 or $55 (depending on what meats you wanted). With 12 people dining, we pretty much ordered at least one of every meat to share between us, which was the perfect option!
Once making our meat selection, we were all brought a trio of small items to enjoy. They consisted of pickles, kimchi and creamy tube pasta. To be honest, none of them caught my attention.
While we were waiting for the meat to arrive, we ordered a few serves of the ‘Deep Fried Dumplings’, which were wrapped with prawn, tofu, vegetable with wheat flour. I’m not a seafood lover, however I couldn’t even taste the prawn in these dumplings as they were full of flavour.
While we were enjoying our appetizers, the grill was fired up in preparation for the arrival of the meats.
The first group of meats to arrive were the Pork Belly, Soy Pork Scotch and a variety of vegetables. Some Korean BBQ places allow you to cook everything on your own, however here they help out with the cooking (which I have no issues with!).
As the food is cooking, the waitress places all the cooked meat along the edge of the grill to keep warm and to enjoy when you are ready. Our next dish to come out was a variety of different chickens including the Soy Chicken and Chilly Chicken. Again all amazing!
To add a bit more to our already meaty meal, I ordered the Sizzling Plate of ‘Spicy Chicken’ which was marinated in sweet chili sauce with vegetable. I under estimated how spicy a dish could be and was unable to eat most of it. However the rest of the table definitely enjoyed it.
SERVICE
Service probably isn’t their strong trait here since it was slow and inattentive while getting some of our drink orders wrong. While we were trying to order, the waitress kept walking away while half the table was waiting to order.
Other than the service, the overall experience was quite fun and am looking forward to our next Korean BBQ experience.
