Jako Japanese Korean Restaurant for BBQ

Jako Japanese Korean Restaurant
2/9 Morley Street, Toowong

Regular readers will know all about my recent obsession with Korean food. Never mind whether it's in the form of a rice dish, soup dish, pancakes or bbq, if it's Korean then I can't get enough of it. Naturally, when I saw an online offer for a Korean BBQ meal, I jumped to make a purchase.

Jako Restaurant is located in Toowong village, conveniently accessible by a couple of main roads. It's a tiny little restaurant and I can only suppose the staff were pushed to capacity when we arrived because despite a booking, we had to wait a good 20 minutes or so before food started being served. They were very apologetic about it though and we didn't mind too much.

Our set meal started off with a couple of soups. On first sight, I thought this was miso soup because well, it looks just like miso soup. It tasted more like a salty pork broth though. I love salt but this was too salty for me. I even thought for a moment that perhaps it wasn't meant to be sipped straight out of the bowl on its own but I overheard the girls in the table next door asking the same thing and the waitress replied that yes, it was for sipping.

We were then served a couple of starters. I really liked the seaweed salad. It had seaweed both in the form of dried nori and that wet, sweet Korean-style seaweed (that sounds kind of gross but I don't know how else to describe it). Anyway, it was very yummy all mixed together. Marc even commented that he normally hates salad dressing but he likes Asian-style salad dressing.

There was also a small serve of roasted edamame. I'm normally very unenthusiastic about edamame. It must be one of the only boring, healthy foods that I am not crazy about. When it's roasted, it's a bit more interesting but I still can't say I love the stuff.

We moved from the greens to a huge plate of meaty delights. The BBQ meal set came with a selection of chicken, pork, beef and calamari. There were some veggies too but we forgot all about that until right at the end. I don't think I even ate any of the vegetables.

My favourite of the meats was the beef. It was sweet, tender and delicious. I also like that beef cooks very quickly on the grill plate. I am impatient, after all. Chicken and pork takes a bit longer and whilst they were still tasty, I'd rather a whole plate of beef! What I have no enthusiasm about is calamari. What's the deal with that stuff? It's like a ring of chewy rubber to me. Meh.

Most of the Korean BBQ places I know about are either in the city or around Sunnybank. If you live around Toowong and need a fix, I can definitely recommend Jako. The service was polite and once the food started coming, it was smooth sailing. We were so full by the end of this meal.