Lee Yakiniku & Sushi 李苑烧肉·寿司 — Restaurant in Toronto

(Visited on Wednesday, Sep 11/24 at 730PM for dine-in)

First visit here so I obviously had to share my thoughts.

Overall, it's not bad but it's not really a place I would visit again if I had a choice. It definitely got busy towards the evening which was nice to see on a Wednesday night.

Staff were quite nice or being newly trained as they had to ask us to repeat our order several times. But other than that very nice and attentive.

There were several things that brought the rating down for me. But let me start with the good things.

Atmosphere was nice. The place was clean and it was very spacious. They actually had grills at the bar for couples or friends which was really cute and I'd never seen that before. The grill was extremely hot and the meat because it was sliced so thin cooked almost instantly (yes, you can turn it down but it was kind of hard for us to find a happy medium). The quality of the meats were all very good (thinly sliced pork belly had a lot of fat to it though). Bathrooms are clean but very small (it says do not flush toilet paper so you have to put it in a garbage...). The STARTER plate was probably the best part, they give you several cuts of their most popular beef AND THEY'RE LABELLED, for you to try so you know what you want to order. This is the only place to do this as far as I've experienced.

Now onto the criticisms I have...

For a Wednesday night the appetizers took a very long time to come out. Meat came out right away, no brainer, but the appetizers took a while and the portion was small - which isn't necessarily a bad thing because they don't want to waste food but I wasn't super impressed with the speed (we ordered appetizers with our 2nd order of meat and part of the order came and we had to remind the staff we were still missing appetizers).

The Fruit Tea on the non-alcoholic drink menu is NOT made in house. I wanted to order the Black Tea Lemonade and the phrase I kept hearing was, "it's not ready yet we have to order it". ??? Okay so I ordered a Mango Green Tea which also had to be ordered and didn't come right away. (Fruit teas were about $5) Then later in the evening, MUCH later, I tried to order the Black Tea Lemonade again and the staff said, they still had to order it and it would take maybe five-ten minutes? Not wanting to wait I decided for another Mango Green Tea. So I'm assuming the fruit teas are not made in house and they get them from a place nearby or next door? Never had this sort of service happen before. I don't really recommend.

Third and finally, the All You Can Drink, is not worth the price. AYCDrink is $5.99 - it's $6 - and only counts toward non-alcoholic drinks. Pop/Soda in a can is $2 and as I said before Fruit Tea is about $5 which means if you want to AT LEASST BREAK EVEN, you need to order three (3) cans of pop or two (2) fruit teas. I don't know about you but I don't think I can or want to drink three cans of pop at a sitting. (I made the mistake of ordering two mango green teas at dinner and ended up not being able to sleep because of the caffeine content).

Overall it's not a bad place to go if you're in the area. There's a ton of great restaurants and I think Lee Yakiniku is a great addition. Not a place I would return to but it has some good qualities. I would probably suggest the lunch menu if you want to check this place out.

All You Can Drink $5.99 Mon to Thurs Regular - $42.99 plus tax is $55.35...

The TLDR is this: Great food, exceptional staff and service, clean, bright and welcoming. One of the easiest recommendations I ever made. Read on for more.

One of the first things I always look for in a new restaursnt is the front of house staff. You can almost immediately tell what kind of experience you're about to have by how the staff carry themselves. The staff here were a class act. They are easily what make this place shine before we even get to the food or ambience. The staff are super friendly, always smiling and insanely attentive. I mean, to a fault. God help you if you pick up a menu. Even if it's for 3 seconds. Because a server will be there before you know it, asking you what you'd like to order. Finished plates, cutlery and glassware are taken off the table very quickly. The staff are also quite accommodating with special requests which was a nice touch. I realize I'm still talking about the staff but they really deserve the recognition. They are incredible, and easily in the top few percentage points of the hundreds of restaurants I've reviewed.

On to the food. This is a Japanese BBQ place but I think it's Chinese run. This is quite common in this area. And, the food is very much in line with that. If you don't like the experience of cooking your own food at a restaurant, they do have options available that you can order ready made. For the rest of you there's a selection of meats, veggies and even hot pot - and it's all you can eat. Overall the food is great. The side dishes seem to be freshly prepared and the various meats on offer are numerous in cut and style - so you should find something that you like if you're a carnivore. That said, some of the meats I found a little too tough. But the sirloin and kalbi beef was solid, as were the pork sausages. Just keep an eye out for the kalbi if you get a bit of extra fat - it likes to ummm... Catch on fire. 🔥😅

The ambience and atmosphere is nice. It's a bright and welcoming dining room with very comfortable seating (especially the benches with all the pillows). It's really clean (yes, including the bathrooms - which is the first place you should check anyway. If the bathroom is clean, the kitchen is clean, 99.99% of the time.) There was some music playing in the background with just banger after banger - everything from the Beatles to REM. Big windows let in lots of natural light and it wasn't too loud when we went (around 8pm on a Sunday)

Overall this was one of the most pleasant and memorable places I've been out to eat. The staff really made it super special and I'll definitely be coming back. I'd highly recommend...

I had high expectations as this place’s grand opening was decorated with flowers and the interior looked quite aesthetic but that was just about it for this place.

Poor quality meats/food. Some of the meats are hit or miss, very thin and mostly just fat. We sent them back/cancelled these orders. One of the staff was nice enough to offer a new platter of what we had ordered though. I really could only recommend the lamb, but even then it’s served with onions mixed in. The onions cook faster than the meat so they get burnt, which required frequent grill changes. -The “special” fried rice is just a sour kimchi fried rice. Their kimchi as a side dish tasted amazing though. -Their ice cream options are strawberry, vanilla and chocolate. It comes in a styrofoam container. Only the chocolate tasted good, I wouldn’t bother with the other flavours. -Their cheese corn is better than the butter corn, there’s barely any butter.

Unsatisfactory equipment. The grill took a long time to heat up and was quite small. Once it did heat up, because the meats were so thin at least half of what we ate ended up getting burnt.

Poor ordering system. You have to order with the staff and they’re ordering on iPads. I got the vibe it was part of their technique to maybe get you to order less, because it can be hard to get their attention to order more. It would have been nice to just have the iPads to order ourselves.

Understaffed? The staff were quite nice, hard-working and accommodating. However, we felt bad for them they looked quite stressed. There were also several times we were brought the wrong items or meats were not brought with vegetables/timing was off.

Overlooked seating area. We were literally first on their reservation list but got maybe the worst spot in the restaurant. It’s in the corner of the restaurant by the window but there’s a pillar that separates you from the next table. It also blocks the staffs view of the table because there were many times our attempts to get their attention went unnoticed. We didn’t even have water for maybe the first 30 minutes we were eating.

We were hoping this would be our new go-to AYCE BBQ but that sadly will not be the case. I wouldn’t eat here again...