Yasu boston full#

And the stir fry, festooned with green beans and snow peas, is mixed with thick noodles, a good foil for the spice of the sauce. The octopus is deliciously tender, though, and served in a sauce with plenty of chili kick and a slightly sweet aftertaste. Entrees occasionally hold surprises, such as the squid in a spicy sauce that instead arrives with octopus in the leading role. Yasu is a good place to explore and experiment - the menu is broad, with both the familiar stews and rice dishes and the unfamiliar cuts of fish and meats. The chili sauce was good, he decided, and the taste intriguing, but the tendon-like texture not what he wanted for a whole entree. The waitress insisted with a laugh that he wouldn't like it and then offered to bring a taste. One evening, a member of our party ordered the spicy sliced skate with vegetables and sesame oil. But the best part is the last - when you reach the crusty rice at the bottom of the pot its toastiness mixes beautifully with the remaining bits of the other ingredients.įor the most part, the wait staff at Yasu - named for owner Daniel 'Yasu' Chung - does aim to inform, or at least warn diners away from dishes they think might be too challenging. Each bite has a little of the egg, a little beef, a few morsels of vegetables. But where is the anchovy paste that would have gone well with the tongue?ĭolsot bibimbap ('dolsot' refers to the stone pot in which it's cooked and served) involves another lesson as the waitress firmly takes it from one of my companions and expertly mixes the ingredients and a spicy-sweet sauce so that the egg on top luxuriously oozes into the rice, spinach, carrots, and others vegetables, along with morsels of beef. With her assistance, the beef is tastier, the bulgogi juicy and tender the tongue has a chewy but appealing texture. On a later visit, the waitress is more involved - possibly taking pity on us for our ineptness - and returns periodically to flip our thin slices of marinated beef or bulgogi and even thinner slices of beef tongue. The quality of the ingredients is good - who can argue with good lobster tail grilled right in front of you? - but a little more instruction from the wait staff might be helpful. It's all a little overwhelming, and though the waiter starts us off, we have to snap to attention every few minutes to retrieve a chunk of meat or seafood from the grill when toasty brown starts to turn to dry. Another server deposits a plate of romaine lettuce and shaved red onion, and yet another arrives with tiny dishes of daikon radish in chili, dark greens with garlic, bean sprouts, and a paste of chilis and anchovies. Our waiter brings the marinated meat and an overflowing platter of salmon, scallops, a lobster tail, shrimp, squid, and mushrooms. Meanwhile, a crunchy seaweed salad and a hearty and very garlicky bowl of beef broth with beef-filled dumplings take the edge off our hunger.Īt least two diners have to order barbecue dishes before the staff will turn on the grills - it's printed on the menu, and reinforced by a waitress when we ask on a later visit if an exception can be made. So we order diamond kalbi, described as being marinated with the chef's special sauce, and a seafood combo with mushrooms. But we're intent on Korean fare, and the sight of party-like communal barbecuing is infectious.

Yasu boston full#

In addition to its Korean items, Yasu also offers a full sushi, sashimi, and Japanese kitchen menu, presumably to snare that lucrative market.

The grill tables seem especially popular around us, families and students chatted in Korean as they flipped meat and seafood over the flames. The restaurant is spacious, with lots of nooks created by wooden partitions. Yasu opened about a year and a half ago in Coolidge Corner. So on a recent rainy Saturday, I returned with a group to settle around one of the grill tables in the back to sample what Yasu has to offer. I'm a fan of Koreana in Cambridge and New Jang Su BBQ in Burlington, and I embrace any opportunity to widen the field. With this in mind, I practically slammed on my brakes driving down Beacon Street in Brookline recently on seeing Yasu, with its bold sign announcing Korean BBQ. Despite all that, how often do we think of going out for Korean? Then there's the spicy-sweet flavors of stir fries, the hearty stews, or all those little dishes of pickled daikon and cabbage that come, free, with the meal. Just think of the range of Korean dishes, from the savory tastes of a seafood scallion pancake to the comforting crusty rice at the bottom of a clay pot of bibimbap to the satisfaction of marinated beef barbecued right at the table. In the landrush of sushi, we've neglected the cuisine of Korea.