Bonga Buldak: Home of Hot Taste

I had dinner at Bonga Buldak, located on Yonge St., for the first time a few nights ago with a couple of friends, and I gotta say that I have mixed feelings about this place. And here's why...

I hadn't eaten all day that day and was starving so I just wanted something filling. It was either this place or some other place for pancakes. I guess Korean food sounded more filling.


The interior of this place reminds me of a Korean pub that I really like (Camto). So I had a really good first impression of the place.


I wasn't feeling too adventurous that day, just like always, so I decided to stick to my usual order for Korean places: Gam Ja Tang - aka pork bone soup. It's a Korean staple, surely it can't go wrong.


Normally Korean restaurants provide lots of complimentry side dishes, but this place only gave us a medium sized salad to be shared between 4 people. Four very hungry people at that. I'm not impressed.


This is my pork bone soup... Now, I love pork bone soup and have had it at many many different korean restaurants. So as a pork bone soup enthusiast, I can tell you that there are 2 types of pork bone soups out there. 1) the one that they make with Korean red pepper powder and Korean red pepper paste, and 2) the one that they make with black pepper.

My personal favorite is the one that they make with Korean red pepper powder and Korean red pepper paste. You can easily tell by the color of the stew. Brigher red tends to be the good kind, whereas, darker and brownish color tends to be the one with black pepper. This one was more on the brown side.


This is what my friend ordered: Spicy blazing chicken with rice. I didn't try it so I won't comment.


This is another dish that my other friend ordered: Squid pancake. It tasted amazing, I really like the fish flakes with the pancake. It was supposed to have bacon in it but my friend is no longer eating meat.

Overall, the only thing that really stood out was this pancake. I thought the other dishes were just ok.

I think the most annoying part about dining here was the bill. We had asked to pay separately, but it took the waitress more than 5 minutes to get that sorted out. Normally, at other Korean restaurants, they separate the bill by calculating each individual dish separately using a calculator, but the waitress was busy trying to figure out how to print the receipt separately for each person. It was taking a lot longer than I would have liked since I just wanted to pay and leave.