Takja BBQ House in Toronto takes the number four spot on the Top 10 list of Air Canada’s Best New Restaurants 2024.
Takja BBQ House
Toronto, ON
4 4
Prestigious Partners
Hulking cuts of prime striploin, ribeye and pork shoulder bathe in the neon glow of the wet and dry aging room, but the spotlights are on the tabletop grills. From the shadows, a waiter swoops into our glossy teal banquette with enviable dexterity. Tonight, we’re taking the DIY out of KBBQ.
Takja means “table” in Korean. Top yours with a seafood pancake topped with uni from Hokkaido, Japan.
In this Korean barbecue house from Edward Bang, Jason Ching and Jeff Kang – the minds behind the sustainably sourced, in-house dry-aged sushi purveyor Oroshi Fish Co. – it’s the servers who handle the cooking at every table.
Leave it up to the chef and ask for the hansang (“a table full of food” in Korean), which includes four cuts of meat.
With the team’s fishmongery DNA at play, we start with the seafood pancake. Loaded with shrimp and squid, it’s thick, plush and wrapped in a crisp exterior. A Super Dry rice lager from Toronto’s Rorschach Brewing Co. makes sense: Its clean, refreshing finish sets us up for the next bite.
Takja BBQ House is “the restaurant that we always wanted to do,” says chef Jeff Kang (right), who opened the spot with Edward Bang (left) and Jason Ching (not pictured).
Takja BBQ House and its sister restaurant, Oroshi Fish Co., bring fire and freshness to Little Italy.
All cuts are brought to the tables on gold plates, “which is pretty traditional in Korea,” says general manager Yunjung Landau.
Or bites, rather. A parade of banchan and condiments turns up and – between two takes on kimchi, pickled mustard greens and squid jeotgal (salted fermented squid) – we can barely restrain our chopsticks. Mine make multiple round trips to the jalapeño muchim, a pickled chili salad that leaves my mouth watering for more.
Choose your own KBBQ adventure with à la carte options like buckwheat noodles with soy and perilla.
Chef Kang steps into the spotlight bearing a tray of prime cuts on gold plates. It’s grill time. He lightly sears the Hawaiian kanpachi and chars sweet soy-marinated Kansas short-rib galbi before stewarding slices to our plates. “Try the fish with just salt first,” he recommends. Good advice. The dry-aged yellowtail shines unadorned. Still, I’m tempted by the housemade wasabi and 30-day fermented soybean paste, a.k.a. ssamjang.
A burbling soon tofu stew is last to join the fun, fiery with enough dadaegi (chili oil) to know they mean it.
Don’t miss: Bingsoo for dessert, a milk-based shaved ice cream with surprise flavours like sweet potato, strawberry-rhubarb
and a wildly sought-after summer corn rendition.
Prestigious Partners
