You smell Korean barbecue in Toronto before you see it. Walk along Bloor Street West on a cold evening and the air between Bathurst and Christie carries charcoal, sesame oil and something sweet and caramelised. Then a door opens and a wave of warm, smoky air spills out with the sound of tongs on steel. The best Korean BBQ Toronto has to offer isn’t really about one restaurant. It’s about choosing the kind of night you want. A loud, cheap round of pork belly and soju with friends? A long, slow, dry-aged tasting menu for an anniversary? Or an all-you-can-eat marathon that ends with everyone groaning in the car home?
This guide covers the restaurants worth your evening, from Koreatown to College Street to the suburbs up Yonge. It explains how the meal works, so you know what to order and who’s meant to be holding the tongs, and it gives you an honest sense of what a table for two costs once tax and tip land. Menus, hours and prices were checked in November 2026 against each restaurant’s own site. Korean barbecue prices move, so treat the figures as the right order of magnitude and look at the current menu before you go.
Where to Go for Korean BBQ in Toronto: The Short List
| Restaurant | Where | Style | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daldongnae | Koreatown (Bloor St W), Yonge & Dundas, Spadina Ave | À la carte, you grill | A first Korean BBQ night; late dinners |
| Takja | College St | Upscale, dry-aged cuts, $135 tasting menu | Celebrations; meat obsessives |
| Arisu Korean BBQ & Sushi | Bloor St W at the Koreatown end | Neighbourhood Korean BBQ with a sushi menu | Mixed groups where not everyone wants to grill |
| Korean Grill House | Scarborough (plus Markham) | All-you-can-eat | Big appetites and big groups |
| Sariwon | Yonge St, Thornhill (just north of the city) | DIY Korean BBQ, hot pot and skewers | A galbi pilgrimage if you have a car |
Prices in Ontario restaurants are listed before the 13% HST, and a tip is expected on top. Our Toronto tipping guide explains how much.
The Restaurants
Daldongnae: the all-rounder
If you’re only going to do Korean barbecue once on a trip, Daldongnae is the safe bet that doesn’t feel like a safe bet. It’s been serving Korean barbecue in Canada since 2017 and now has three downtown locations: the Koreatown original at 658 Bloor Street West, a second-floor room at 361 Yonge Street near Yonge and Dundas, and one at 355 Spadina Avenue on the edge of Kensington Market. Its name refers to the hillside “moon villages” of 1950s and 1960s Seoul, and the restaurant pitches itself on that feeling of warmth and togetherness. Expect a lively, social room rather than a hushed one.
The menu is strictly à la carte. Daldongnae says plainly that it does not do all-you-can-eat. You order by the serving (185 g each), with a minimum of two servings to start and at least one per person. At the Koreatown location in November 2026, pork belly was $20.99 a serving, the thin-sliced pork belly the same, pork jowl $21.99, rib eye roll $27.99 and the signature boneless beef short rib $30.99. Every table gets steamed egg, corn cheese, lettuce for wrapping, five banchan and a soybean stew. Refills of the sides are limited, and bills are split equally only, so settle up among yourselves.
What to order: one pork belly and one short rib between two people is the classic opening. Add the pork jowl if you like a bit of chew and fat. Staff will help with the grill if you look lost, but this is a place where you do most of the cooking yourself.
Practical details: the Koreatown room is open daily from noon to 2am, with the kitchen’s last call at 1am, and it stays open on statutory holidays. You can book online or by phone. Same-day bookings at Koreatown go through the phone line, groups of seven or more should call or email ahead, and some tables are always held back for walk-ins. The menu is entirely peanut-free, there’s a vegan barbecue set ($20.99), and some of the premium beef cuts are halal-certified (marked with an H).
Takja: the splurge
Takja, at 962 College Street, is what happens when Korean barbecue goes through a fine-dining kitchen and comes out the other side still recognisably itself. Chefs Jeff Kang and Edward Bang build the menu around dry-ageing, house ferments and tableside grilling. Every table in the intimate dining room is centred on its grill, with custom ventilation built in. Canada’s 100 Best placed it fifth on its list of the best new restaurants of 2025.
The signature is the hansang, “a table full of food”, at $135 per person. It runs through a seafood platter, a seafood pancake with caviar, banchan with scallion salad, a chef’s selection of barbecue cuts, seasonal vegetables, mushroom rice cooked in a gamasot (a traditional iron pot) and bingsoo, Korean shaved ice, for dessert. A beef-only version is available if you ask. You can also order à la carte. The short rib galbi is $52 for 6 oz, the Suwon-style galbi $60 (in limited quantities), dry-aged Ontario coppa $45 and a dry-aged Ontario ribeye $95 for 8 oz, all served with scallion salad, lettuce for ssam, pickles and condiments.
Is it worth it? For a special occasion, yes. Takja isn’t a place to fill up cheaply on pork belly. You go for the quality of the beef and the hospitality, and for the slow pacing of a meal that’s built to last a whole evening. If your idea of Korean barbecue is a rowdy table and a fourth bottle of soju, go to Bloor Street instead. Takja is open Monday to Sunday, 5 to 10pm, and you should book.
Arisu Korean BBQ & Sushi: the easy-going neighbourhood option
Arisu sits at 584 Bloor Street West, at the eastern end of Koreatown where the strip meets Bathurst. It’s a neighbourhood restaurant that does both Korean barbecue and sushi, which makes it handy when your group includes someone who doesn’t want to spend dinner turning meat. It opens for lunch and dinner and takes reservations, and it does party trays. Check its site for current hours. Arisu publishes its menu as images rather than text, so check its site or ask at the table for the current barbecue prices.
Korean Grill House: the all-you-can-eat option
For many Torontonians, Korean Grill House was the gateway to Korean barbecue: a long-running all-you-can-eat chain. The company lists two locations, in Scarborough and Markham, both serving its all-you-can-eat barbecue menu. It’s the right call for a big group with big appetites, students, teenagers, or anyone who wants to try a dozen things without doing the maths on every plate. Prices differ between lunch and dinner and change from time to time, so check the menu on the restaurant’s site before you go. The site is also the place to confirm the Scarborough address before you set off.
Sariwon: worth the drive up Yonge
Strictly speaking, Sariwon isn’t in Toronto. It’s at 7388 Yonge Street in Thornhill, just north of the city limit at Steeles, along the Yonge corridor where much of the Greater Toronto Area’s Korean community eats. It’s a family-owned restaurant that does DIY Korean barbecue alongside hot pot and skewers, open daily from 11am to 11pm. If you have a car, or you’re already up in North York, it’s a reasonable reason to keep going up Yonge. If you’re staying downtown without a car, Daldongnae will give you a comparable night without the trip.
Walking the Koreatown strip
Bloor Street West between Bathurst and Christie has more Korean restaurants than this list covers. Small barbecue houses, tofu-soup specialists, fried-chicken joints and late-night pocha (drinking spots) all sit along it, and they open and close more often than the guidebooks keep up with. If you’d rather wander and pick a place on the night, a few signs help. Look for a menu priced by the serving, extractor hoods over the tables, and a room full of people who look like regulars. Check online that a place is still open before you build an evening around it.
How Korean BBQ Works
The first time can feel like being handed someone else’s kitchen. There’s a grill in the middle of the table, a dozen small dishes arrive that you didn’t order, and the server leaves you with tongs and scissors. Here’s what’s going on.
The cuts
- Samgyeopsal (pork belly): unmarinated slabs of belly, grilled until the fat crisps and then snipped into bite-sized pieces with scissors. The default order and the most forgiving to cook.
- Hangjeongsal (pork jowl): a smaller, chewier cut with a lovely fatty edge. Often on menus as “pork jowl” or “pork neck”.
- Galbi (short rib): beef short rib, often marinated in soy, garlic, pear and sugar. Boneless versions grill quickly; bone-in cuts are slower and more theatrical. “Suwon galbi” refers to a style from the city of Suwon, south of Seoul, where short rib is a local pride.
- Bulgogi: thin slices of marinated beef, usually cooked on a solid plate or dome rather than a grate so the sauce doesn’t drip into the fire.
- Chadolbaegi (brisket): paper-thin slices of brisket that cook in seconds. Pull them off almost as soon as they hit the grill.
Banchan, ssam and the sauces
The small dishes that arrive unprompted are banchan: kimchi, pickled radish, seasoned bean sprouts, spinach, potato salad, fish cakes and whatever the kitchen is making that week. They come with the meal. Most places will top up the basics, though some, Daldongnae included, limit refills.
Then there’s ssam, the wrap. Take a lettuce or perilla leaf, add a piece of meat, a smear of ssamjang (a thick, savoury paste of fermented soybean and chili), a slice of raw garlic or a sliver of grilled garlic and some scallion salad. Fold it and eat it in one bite. You’ll usually also get sesame oil with salt and pepper, which is the classic dip for unmarinated pork belly.
Who does the grilling?
It depends on the restaurant. At casual places you cook yourself and staff swap out the grill plate when it gets charred. At upscale rooms like Takja, servers handle the grill so the meat is cooked properly. If you’re unsure, ask. Nobody minds, and a server would much rather show you once than watch you incinerate a $30 short rib.
A few things that make the meal go better:
- Start with unmarinated cuts and finish with marinated ones, which burn easily and gum up the grill.
- Don’t crowd the grill. Two or three pieces at a time cook evenly; ten pieces steam.
- Cut pork belly once it’s crisp on the outside, then let the pieces finish.
- Ask for a fresh grill plate when the current one is blackened. It’s normal and it’s included.
The finish
A Korean barbecue meal usually ends with something to settle all that meat. That might be a bubbling soybean stew (doenjang-jjigae) with rice, cold buckwheat noodles (naengmyeon), or fried rice made on the grill plate with the leftover fat and kimchi. At Takja the hansang runs through rice, noodles and bingsoo.
All-You-Can-Eat or À la Carte?
Toronto has both, and the choice matters more than which restaurant you pick.
All-you-can-eat works on a fixed price per person, usually cheaper at lunch than at dinner, for unlimited plates of the cuts on that menu. Many places add a time limit or charge for food left on the plate, so read the rules on the menu before you order with enthusiasm. It’s great value for big eaters and groups, and great fun with teenagers. The catch is that the cheaper cuts dominate, and the meat is often thin-sliced, frozen and pre-marinated, which is fine but rarely memorable.
À la carte means paying by the serving. You’ll eat less, and with fewer, better cuts. The meat tends to be thicker, fresher and grilled with more care, and the banchan and stew that come with it are often better too. For two people who want a proper introduction to Korean barbecue, à la carte at a place like Daldongnae is our pick. For a party of eight 19-year-olds, all-you-can-eat wins every time.
What Korean BBQ Costs in Toronto
Here’s what a meal looks like at real menu prices from November 2026.
| Scenario | Order | Food subtotal | With 13% HST |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two people, casual, at Daldongnae Koreatown | Pork belly, pork jowl and boneless short rib (three servings) | $73.97 | $83.59 |
| Two people, tasting menu at Takja | Two hansang | $270.00 | $305.10 |
Neither figure includes drinks or the tip. Three servings between two is a satisfying dinner at Daldongnae with the stew, egg and banchan that come with it. Hungry eaters might add a fourth. At Takja, wine adds to the bill. For all-you-can-eat, check the restaurant’s current lunch and dinner prices, then add tax, drinks and tip as usual.
If you’re budgeting a whole trip, our Toronto travel budget guide puts restaurant costs in context with hotels and transit.
What to Drink
Korean barbecue is a drinking cuisine. The salt, fat and smoke all call for something cold.
- Soju: the clear Korean spirit, usually around the strength of a strong wine rather than vodka, sold in green bottles and poured into small glasses. Fruit-flavoured versions are popular. Tradition says you pour for others and never for yourself, and you take the glass with two hands when someone older pours for you.
- Somaek: soju dropped into beer. Lighter than it sounds and dangerous because of it.
- Makgeolli: a milky, slightly fizzy rice wine, lower in alcohol and very good with spicy food and pancakes.
- Korean beer: light lagers that do the job of cutting through fat.
Not drinking? Barley tea is often served on the table, and many places stock Korean soft drinks and sparkling fruit sodas.
Getting There
- Koreatown (Daldongnae, Arisu): take Line 2 Bloor–Danforth to Bathurst or Christie station. Arisu is near the Bathurst end; Daldongnae’s Koreatown location sits between the two stations.
- Yonge and Dundas (Daldongnae): Line 1 to TMU station, the stop that was called Dundas until December 2025. The restaurant is on the second floor at 361 Yonge.
- Spadina Avenue (Daldongnae): the 510 Spadina streetcar runs past it, and it’s an easy walk from Kensington Market or Chinatown.
- College Street (Takja): the 506 Carlton streetcar runs along College Street.
- Thornhill (Sariwon): easiest by car. By transit, ride Line 1 to Finch, the northern end of the Yonge line, and use York Region Transit’s trip planner for the bus up Yonge.
Our TTC guide covers fares, PRESTO and contactless payment. Tap the same card each time to keep your transfer valid.
When to Go and How to Book
Korean barbecue suits the colder months. Friday and Saturday evenings are the hardest nights to get a table. Book if the restaurant takes reservations, especially for groups. If it doesn’t, go early, or lean into the late hours: Daldongnae’s Koreatown room runs until 2am, which makes it a natural last stop after a show or a game.
For bigger groups, book well ahead and call rather than relying on the online system. Daldongnae asks parties of seven or more to call or email. If you’re celebrating at Takja, mention it when you book.
Dietary Needs
- Vegetarian and vegan: Daldongnae has a vegan barbecue set and other vegetarian dishes. At most places, banchan and stews may contain fish sauce or seafood, so ask. For a wider list, see our guide to vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Toronto.
- Halal: Daldongnae marks its halal-certified beef cuts with an H on the menu. Elsewhere, ask before ordering.
- Allergies: Daldongnae’s menu is peanut-free and most of it is gluten-free, with exceptions marked. Marinades usually contain soy and often wheat, so tell your server about any allergy.
Make a Night of It in Koreatown
The classic Koreatown evening is simple. Have barbecue on Bloor, then go to a noraebang, a private karaoke room rented by the hour, until the small hours. Several of the karaoke places are within a few minutes’ walk of the barbecue restaurants. Our Toronto karaoke guide has the details. If you want to see more of the area by daylight, our guide to the Annex and Bloor West covers the bookshops, cafés and specialty shops that run east toward the university.
Korean barbecue is also one of the best cold-weather meals in the city. A grill at the table on a January night beats almost anything else, which is one more reason to add it to your winter in Toronto plans.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the best Korean BBQ in Toronto?
For a first-time, all-round experience, Daldongnae in Koreatown (or its Yonge and Spadina locations) is the easiest recommendation. For a special occasion with dry-aged beef and a tasting menu, go to Takja on College Street. For all-you-can-eat, Korean Grill House in Scarborough.
How much does Korean BBQ cost in Toronto?
At Daldongnae’s Koreatown location, servings ran from $20.99 for pork belly to $30.99 for boneless short rib in November 2026, with a minimum of two servings. Two people eating three servings pay about $84 with tax, before drinks and tip. Takja’s tasting menu is $135 per person before tax.
Is all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ worth it?
For big appetites and groups, yes. For couples who care more about quality than quantity, à la carte usually gives a better meal for not much more money. Check the time limit and any leftover-food charge before you order.
Where is Koreatown in Toronto?
On Bloor Street West, mainly between Bathurst and Christie streets, served by Bathurst and Christie stations on Line 2. Plenty of Korean restaurants also line Yonge Street in North York and up into Thornhill.
Do I have to cook the meat myself?
At casual restaurants you usually do, with help from staff if you ask. At upscale places like Takja, servers grill for you.
Can vegetarians eat at a Korean BBQ restaurant?
Yes, at some. Daldongnae has a vegan barbecue set, and stews, pancakes and rice dishes are often meat-free. Ask about fish sauce in the banchan and kimchi.
Is Korean BBQ good for kids?
Older kids usually love it. Tell younger children the grill is hot, and seat them away from it. All-you-can-eat places are often the most relaxed with families.
Related Toronto Guides
- The Annex and Bloor West: Neighbourhood Guide
- Karaoke in Toronto
- Toronto’s Multicultural Food Scene
- Best Restaurants in Toronto
- Best Ramen in Toronto
- Best Steakhouses in Toronto
- Cheap Eats in Toronto
- Kensington Market Guide
Photo Credits
Featured image, raw pork belly with onion and garlic on a round grill: Korean.cuisine-Samgyeopsal-01 by hellochris, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bloor Street West in Koreatown: Bloor Street West in Koreatown Toronto, June 24 2026 (01) by Dillan Payne, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Koreatown street sign on Bloor Street West: Koreatown, Bloor Street, Toronto (2025-01-12) 04 by Dillan Payne, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Beef short rib on a grill: Gimhaesi City 103 by KOREA.NET, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Pork belly dipped in ssamjang: Dipping samgyeopsal-gui in ssamjang by 대경라이프, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
A table of banchan: Banchan in South Korea by Ahrbear, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
