I've said this before, I'm a snot when it comes to Korean food so I'm sort of hard pressed to give any Korean restaurant in Toronto 5 stars 'cause I'm one of those annoying assholes who thinks she knows better. Anyway, if I could wipe the memory of the first time I had dak kalbi in this style in Seoul I would give this place 5 stars. In there defense, this is a relatively modern recipe so I don't know that there's a truly traditional way of preparing it and I believe it's a specialty of a certain area in Korea so I'm sure the version I had in Seoul was just a version of the original as well. For the price the food is real good and the novelty of having a Korean place dedicated to this style of dak kalbi in Toronto is really worthy of more stars but the reason why I haven't is that I wish that when they added the rice at the end they would really let it get crispy and carmellized like they do in a dolsot bimbimbap before they mixed it up again. That's really the key thing I remember about the first time I had dak kalbi in Seoul which I find missing in Joon's version.
The 4th star is really for the really good service I've consistantly received here and the beer is always icy cold which is integral to this eating. I have a friend who is a die hard fan of Joon's and actually eats here at least once a week despite the fact that it makes her clothing smell like dead bear. It's so bad that she's relegated to bringing a garbage bag to seal her jacket in before she enters the restaurant to shield it from the ensuing reek. It's a lot of pungent garlic and meat smoke imbedding into your clothing so do what I do and get an outfit that you can dedicate to wearing while dining at Joon's and forget about dancing at the disco after....'cause baby, you gonna be dancin' alone.