Our Eating Group was led into this unique restaurant: it would seem that it may be the only Korean Barbecue in London, but of course there are other Korean Restaurants in London. I remembered trying this many years ago when it was not a bbq place, but could not remember anything about it except that I had not been sufficiently motivated to go back there these past 30 years. It has been in its location for ever, in a side street on the Main Drag of Regents Park Road and Ballards Lane, and is opposite the back entrance of Finchley Central tube station: it is completely invisible to passing trade. It is completely unpretentious, and weirdly enough has the only waitress who speaks English as a first language on their staff.
There is a fairly helpful web site at http://www.yijo.co.uk/ but what it does not tell you is how much to order and how to cook it properly. We were watching the other patrons who seemed to have a much better idea than us of what to do, but we were reluctant to look too naive.
The easiest thing to do is to show you the itemised bill. We order 5 starters for 5 people to pass around, and a bit too much in the way of main courses to get stuff to barbecue and accompaniment.
The first five items on the list were the starters, and this is an idea of what they looked like
It is difficult to explain what the flavour is, as it is definitely oriental, but not Chinese, Japanese or like Thai or Vietnamese. A taste of its own. Suffice it to say that it was extremely tasty, not too spicy, and hot scoring an 8.5 on the scale. The portion sizes were generous for starter, but they were not cheap, as an average dish at this restaurant is about £8.50.
We probably ordered too much for the barbecue course in the way of accompaniments, but the actual helpings of meat and fish to barbecue were quite small and it was only by virtue of substantial starters and accompaniment, that there was enough to go around.
The above gives you an idea of the barbecue arrangement which is in the middle of the table, and the waiting staff come and fill the centre with hot charcoal. We should have had some help with this, as they suggest on the web site, but we were left to figure it out for ourselves and watching other customers. What we did not know was that like a conventional bbq, we should have left the charcoal to heat up, so for the first 20 minutes, it was struggling to cook things quickly enough, and the baby octopus did not cook enough and had to be put back on. The tongue cooked very quickly but was a bit unsubstantial, and the salmon was quite fiddly. The prawns were a bit easier, as we were told that they would change colour once cooked. It was all a bit strange and unfamiliar, but at least with it being cooked by ourselves, it was hot at the point of delivery. The noodles which you can see in the lower part of the upper picture were delicious and had really fat noodle in it, which I thought was asparagus when I first looked at it. The vegetable platter was a bit uninspiring and definitely not £5.50 worth.
So the bill for 5 including 3 bottles of wine and 12.5% service (there was not a lot of service as it was all brought at once, and we cooked the bbq ourselves) was £181 which was a bit of a big hit for a distinctly suburban restaurant.
Would I go there again? Possibly so, but I would not order as much, I would not go for the barbecue, and would probably try some of their soups and stews. I think they should have made sure that we knew what we were doing, and I think 12.5% service is a bit of a liberty take. As we had spent so much, I asked for a loyalty card, but they would only endorse it for the diners who had paid in cash. As this place is probably geared to young ex pats, they probably are not desperate for my repeat custom
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