——-20/04/2012——-
After searching for this restaurant and doing a big loop around the block before we realised Tosung Charcoal Restaurant was across the road from where we first started, we were hungry and ready to eat! I have always been a fan of Korean BBQs and don’t mind the smokey BBQ smell that lingers in your clothes and hair afterwards.
Each table is fitted with a BBQ and exhaust fan.
We are all ready to go!
It was almost like being in a foreign country when they placed complimentary sides for us and we didn’t ask what they were and instead we just hesitantly tried them all.
Starting from top left: shallot pancake(?)- it was cold and not that great, onions in a brown sauce– it had a raw texture but it didn’t taste raw, potato salad with apple (no photo)- so delicious! Just like how my grandma used to make it; a salad with a mystery pink sauce– the sauce had a really subtle faint hint of sweetness before really quickly leaving your mouth with no taste, how odd; a variety of sauces (no photo) and of course the national dish, Kimchi (no photo) which was really spicy.
Pan fried dumplings Gun Ma Du 5 pcs ($10.00) Delicious but really expensive for what it is.
Duck salad ($17.00) the duck tasted like a cured ham and the salad was covered in a really strong sauce but I couldn’t put my finger on what the flavour was. Definitely not worth $17.00 though.
Let’s start cooking! I ordered pork ribs, marinated chicken with teriyaki sauce and thin beef skirt. I was really disappointed that they didn’t have chicken wings on the menu (not very Korean I know) but it is one of my favourite things to eat.
Pork ribs ($19.00) the nicest meat we ordered.
Marinated chicken with teriyaki sauce ($19.00) I must have been doing it really wrong if the waitress had to come up after giggling and take the blunt scissors away from me after I attempted to desperately try to cut up the fatty chicken breast. She cut the chicken into smaller portions but it was still really fatty.
and thin beef skirt ($23.00) this was really fatty which I usually wouldn’t mind but not if half of the strip is solid fat.
The meats seemed a little bland even after dousing them with the random sauces provided.
Just in case cooking ourselves didn’t really work out I ordered marinated BBQ beef (So Bul Go Gi-$14.00) and rice. I had to get the rice topped up several times otherwise my friends wouldn’t get any.
The staff were really attentive and I do like how they have a buzzer at every table to ask for staff but their English isn’t very good and they struggled to respond when I asked them something about the dish.
My friends and I might have failed at the cooking part and not really knowing what to do with the sauces didn’t really help either, but I wouldn’t come back here even with a Korean explaining everything to me. I found the meats poor quality, not much flavour in the food and everything was crazily overpriced. It came to around $35.00 per person and I left feeling really hungry still- disappointing.
Venue: Tosung Charcoal BBQ
Address: 15 Flinders Way, Griffith ACT 2603
Phone: (02) 6295 2627
TALES OF A CONFECTIONIST 