Now I’ve never really enjoyed Korean Barbecue’s or KBBQ for short. I’ve never had a good experience with them–yes Seoul Garden I am pointing fingers. But ever since I’m Kim’s opened its doors at the School of the Arts (SOTA), I’ve walked by it too many times to miss the throngs of people eating there. Also the wonderful ‘aroma’ of meat just wafts out of the restaurant. I decided to put away my doubts and natural resistance to KBBQs and give I’m Kim a try.
You can’t miss I’m Kim with its bright signboard. The next thing you’ll notice is the number of stickers, each with one offer or another, but sadly none for dinner! Dinner is about $30 a head after GST and Service charge.
Soon enough we were ushered to our seats and we immediately started grabbing our food to barbecue. Now as I went with my fellow justsayers, we weren’t remotely interested in the vegetables and started with tons of meat (and well… ended with that too).
As we grabbed our food we headed back to our table and started cooking everything. There are a few things I never liked about the ‘cook it yourself’ concept. For starters you can only cook so much at a time, then food does take time to cook, so as your body slowly digests you won’t be able to eat a lot–sooner or later your brain will register that it’s full.
In addition to that, there’s is a chance that you undercook or overcook some things (not everyone’s the best at cooking), not giving you the best taste or texture for the food. Finally, if you cook so many things on the same grill, it does start to get quite filthy and the food starts to have a weird taste–but enough about that lets get to the I’m Kim experience!
The variety of food was pretty decent for the price and you get a decent array of meat such as pork, beef, chicken–both marinated and un-marinated, vegetables and a little seafood to grill. There’s also cooked food as well as soups, a salad bar and the fruit of the day for all you health nuts out there.
Service was quick and the manager (or the owner of the restaurant… we assume) took his time to go up to each table to ask guests how the food was. And to answer on of my pet peeves, you can change the cooking grill whenever it gets too dirty. The fact that you could change the grill and that someone came up to us to ask how our experience was made my night, making me leave with the impression that I’m Kim’s is somewhere that I definitely want to return.
Overall, I think the food is pretty decent for the price you pay, although the marinated stuff was a bit too sweet for my taste–I like a balance sweet with savoury always. The service was impressive for a buffet style restaurant and it’s a must-try for all you KBBQ fans out there!