By Charmaine

Now that summer barbeque season is coming to a close, Torontoist decided to investigate a BBQ of a different variety – the new Korean BBQ place on Bloor Street, just east of Bathurst.
Located far away from Koreatown’s natural boundaries, Blur (549 Bloor Street, with an umlaut over the U please) is a Korean BBQ place that used to be a dive bar of some sort (TOist doesn’t really know, we avoided the place in its previous incarnation). We really enjoyed that the owners left the place as is. The sign is the same, just with cheap sticker letters saying ‘KOREAN BARBECUE,’ and the old wooden tables simply have gas grills installed in them. All has been left as is, which makes for a charming and unusual juxtaposition, décor-wise.
Since we love grilling our own meats, and since TOist loves Korean foods, we figured Blur was a good bet. There are only about six tables with a tabletop metal grill, but there was no wait for us, as we arrived in the middle of the week. This place is casual and laidback, and, true to form, we even noticed one of our regular waitresses from Kor-town hanging out and drinking beer in her downtime.

We ordered a combination of three meats – the bulgogi beef (slices of marinated beef), pork (thin slices of marbled pork belly) and ‘wine pork’ (slices of pork belly, soaked in some sort of wine). Some tasty side dishes arrived at our table, including kimchi, Korea’s famous pickled spicy cabbage dish, some very vinegary cold jellyfish (which was good, by the way), and some seasoned soybean sprouts. There was also a very delicious salad which we ate with our meat, incorporating green leaf lettuce, green onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, vinegar, and pepper.
The fun thing about cooking your own food is that you can eat it hot off the grill at whatever doneness you desire. Unlimited side dishes are available at request, and, as an homage to the old place, Blur serves an extensive list of cocktails, mixed drinks, beer, and other alcoholic beverages. Highly recommended!