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| - Korean BBQs in Toronto mostly fall into two categories, the cheap and plentiful style that offer cheap all-you-can-eat meat on a grill (as seen in the downtown "Korean Grill House" variety), and the non-all-you-can-eat variety that tend to have much better meat, much nicer ambience, and significantly higher prices (e.g. $25 per plate of meat), like Seoul House in North York.
Chako is a reasonable compromise between those two. They are spacious and well-decorated, their meat is typically a little nicer than the cheaper restaurants, but they're still all-you-can-eat and lower priced than some of the more expensive Korean grills.
Their meat is decent, but still not up to the high quality of the more expensive range. The quality of the cuts and marinade seems to vary from visit to visit. Sometimes the marinade is flavourful and permeates the meat, other times it's hard to detect. The sliced beef is sometimes thicker and sometimes thinner, sometimes very cohesive, sometimes prone to shredding as you cook it. It's always decent, just sometimes it's better than others times.
Service is usually reasonably prompt, but not especially detail-orientd. Be prepared to ask for something more than once or send something back that you didn't ask for (or eat things you didn't ask for). It's not a big deal, but their error rate is higher than other restaurants.
The lunch crowd keeps the restaurant busy, but not to capacity. I gather it gets really full in the evening.
Still, I come here fairly regularly, and I enjoy myself, so they're basically getting some of the important things right.
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