Tori Korean Restaurant

Tori Korean Restaurant is my favorite place to go for the seafood noodle soup. This is the traditional Korean dish known as Jam Pong. With a spicy red kimchee flavoring this soup will knock your socks off. It is spicy and filling. It includes a good amount of noodles, vegetables and seafood. Make sure you have napkins on hand and you wear your splash proof gear because if not you may ruin your clothes with the red stains from your slurping of your soup.
With every Korean meal you have your traditional Bhan Chan. Tori does a good job with this and they serve a group of six dishes for your table to share. In Asian cultures it is normal to share side dishes in this manner.
Unless you are Korean or have a taste for this style of tea I would not order the hot tea. The taste is much different than any tea that I have ever had. It has a saturated rice taste to it and is not refreshing at all in my opinion. I can say that people who seem to be regulars at Tori do order this item with grace. This must be the American in me coming out.
Overall, Tori is a nice restaurant with good service and will always be a place where I can get my Jam Pong noodles.

Closed.

I had the beef bulgogi and my wife the seafood noodles. Both were a little spicy for us but tolerable. I agree with Ron W. there was a lot of food with the seafood noodles. The korean OB beer was good, and the rice-​ginger drink at the end was great and neutralized all the remaining hot spice flavor on our tongues.

My wife being Korean, I’m no stranger to Korean food. In comparison, I find the food just average to most other korean restaurants. They offer a good variety of dishes from cooked fish, to noodles, to marinated meat, to what I refer to as the ‘korean fried rice’. The prices are slightly high, as is all food now-​a-​days. Been here about 3 times, each time trying something different, and the food has yet to wow me.
2.5 — Soon dubu (korean tofu) — Traditional taste, and a bit too heavy with flavor. Slightly sub-​par in my opinion. Try Chodang Tofu Village about 2 – 3 miles away instead.
3 — Cooked mackerel — I don’t think much skill goes into grilling mackerel but I found it enjoyable nonetheless. I love that the fish is of a decent size that leaves you satisfied but not sick from the fish oils.
2.5 — Marinated beef — Not sure why they charge so much for so little meat. Tastes pretty standard there, I didn’t think it was anything memorable.
3 — side dishes — My coworkers can’t get enough of this stuff. Nor can they grasp why they keep bringing more out for free.
3.5 — Dessert drink — Just a small cup of sweet rice drink. Delicious on a hot summer day!
Overall, this place gets a 3, and makes for a good choice for lunch out with the coworkers.

Today I had the Beef Bulgogi which was really good and my coworker had the Haemul Jambong (seafood with noodles) which I had the first time I went there. I highly recommend the Haemul Jambong. Its a great tasting dish and for the money you get a lot of food. The Beef Bulgogi was good as well but it was not much food there. The side dishes were for the most part, very good as well. I loved the eggplant side dish we got this time. I will try to pick another noodle dish for next time. Overall another great lunch!

a beacon of culinary enlightenment in the midst of a drearily vast industrial/​business park and fast food joint wasteland, where souls anonymously disappear into a chasm of nothingness. Very tasty, fresh, highly authentic Korean food served by friendly people to an apparently almost entirely Korean clientele. beef bulgogi and spicy seafood noodle soup both were excellent. After the meal they gave me a little tea bowl of a
sweet drink made from rice that the waitress told me would help digestion, it was very good.

Always drive by, but have never stopped… but I think we are going to add this place to our regular rotation! Chicken Bulgogi was great. The meat was tender and well prepared, and the sauce was spicy, but not super spicy… probably a 2.5 out of 5 on the spicy scale. The banchan served was superb! It really does enhance the meal (even if you are guessing what it is), but we all wished there was more of it. We were a party of 3, and noticed that the quantity of banchan served to us (6 dishes) was the same as served to the other parties of 2. Hoping that if we go with a party of 4 that we’d get more??? Worst case scenario… we all walk in individually and get our own banchan!
Also, since this was our first visit, we all made the rookie mistake of ordering the ‘hot tea.’ Unless you like the taste of dog’s breath, do what everyone else did in the restaurant (which we noticed too late) and just get iced water!
Bonus: End of meal sweet rice water… not really filling, but dang tasty!

I hate to give anything less than 4 stars for Korean-​run businesses, but maybe I went in with high expectations due to the number of positive reviews on this place. I had just an OK experience. (However, as you will read later, maybe I would have given a 5-​star if only I had ordered the RIGHT thing).
Tori is located in a small strip mall on Higgins (near Japanese Kuramaya), and it is a fairly small place. Good for groups with its big tables, and they do have private dining tables. Good casual place for dining, but not nice enough to propose or have a romantic dinner.
The interior is very clean, and I thought it was cute that they have the chopsticks and spoons in a plastic little box on the table waiting for you. I found it hilarious that they have a little doorbell so that you can hail your server, but it is handy. For you parents out there, Tori has high chairs, but if your kid doesn’t like BBQ, there’s not a lot of selection for the young picky toddlers.
This place is BBQ-​focused so keep that in mind. They have a lunch menu that has several other non-​BBQ items, but for dinner, they have very few dishes other than BBQ. The BBQ grill is not built into the table, they bring a portable grill to your table. I’m happy to report, it did not get smoky and leave 2 inches of grease on our faces.
As for the BBQ — it’s tasty. Traditional beef kalbi, beef bulgogi, pork bbq, dak galbi, etc. They also offer jun dol (hot pot), etc. They advertised «duck bulgogi» which sounds interesting, but I wondered if they just meant and misspelled «dak.» Anyway, we were dopey because instead of ordering just kalbi (which is what we did), we should have ordered… wait for it… wait for it… the freaking ALL YOU CAN EAT BBQ. Seriously, man. I think we must have lost part of our brain outside before we came in. How did we only order kalbi and not pay a mere extra $ 5 bucks for all you can eat BBQ, including the duck bulgogi, and several other kinds of bbq meats? Also, it comes with a free soju or OB/​Hite beer. That is a great deal. $ 24.95 a person and you can have all you can eat barbecue. We should have gotten that. I’m an idiot.
One thing to note about kalbi –be sure you check which kind you order because they aren’t all the sweet tangy traditional kalbi; some kind of taste salty like so-​gong-​gui. Still good, but not the traditional kalbi you might be looking for.
The real reason for my deduction of two stars relates to the non-​BBQ elements. For one, they gave us only 4 dishes of banchan with our kalbi. FOUR! That’s unacceptable for a Korean restaurant where BBQ is ordered. (I was surprised to read the other Unilocal review here where someone else had 8 dishes — in fact, I was pretty jealous). No kkaktugi, no sweet/​spicy fish, no seasoned carrots, no kongnamul (spicy bean sprouts), not even «potato salad.» Just two kinds of kimchee, a breaded fish, and fermented onions. WEAK. For me, it’s important, no, crucial, that Korean restaurants offer a nice variety of banchan — at least 8 dishes! C’mon now! Oh and they didn’t offer any rice with the BBQ. You have to order it as an addition. For the price (2 people kalbi — $ 45), rice should come automatically. Add an appetizer and some drinks and tip, and the bill hobbled around almost $ 80 for 2 people. For that kind of green, I expect to be packed full and rolled out the door. Instead, I left kind of hungry.
Service was excellent, but then again we were the only ones in the restaurant as we came at an odd time.
So, due to our stupidity in not ordering the all you can eat barbecue, take this review with a grain of salt. I’ll come back another time to try the All You Can Eat and hopefully bump this review up to 4 – 5 stars. But today, based on other dishes and paltry banchan, it’s a 3 — star.

Great atmosphere, awesome selection of authentic Korean dishes. staff was helpful. overall great place. check this place out well worth it!

great place to have yummy korean food with a group of friends! the service is excellent and the seating is sectioned off with high enough barriers for the right amount of privacy. makes for a cozy place to eat delicious food. :) try the dak galbi and the bibim nengmyun.

Authentic Korean food at great prices in a nice modern setting. This little mom and pop place is in a little strip mall that you’d just as soon pass up. The staff was friendly but I was with my Korean parents. Thus I could see how the service could be less accommodating if this weren’t so just as I’ve seen at many other Korean restaurants. The $ 10 pork bulgogi lunch special was great. The banchan of 8 or so various things were all quite good with my favorites being pickled radish with seaweed and thin strips of potato. The kimchi was good too. The places was just packed with other Koreans so everyone seemed to be having a nice time chatting and eating some good food. A great place to try to try authentic korean food in the burbs.

Went here for lunch today. Yeah, James is right – It’s between a 3 or 4, but the service was only a 3 so, 3 stars it is.
$ 9.95 for beef bulgogi. Pretty good, actually, and I really like the soup and the banchan dishes. Beef was tender and seasoned well, good lunch portion.
Service was a bit slow and awkward, but nothing terrible. Problem is that their competition next store is Kuramaya, and for $ 13 after tax and tip, kinda pricey for an above average lunch.
I’ll try this place sometime for dinner though and update.

best korean restaurant in the chicagoland area. yean, i said it.
while every other korean spot in the area is just putting out the same korean food, this place has some dishes that you cannot get anywhere else. specifically chicken kalbi, which was one of my favorite things to eat in korea… and was totally disappointed when i realized that it was unavailable in chicago. anyway, they serve it here. and it’s really good.
maybe i’m being generous with 5 stars. the food is definitely to my liking, but the service is really nice too. the woman who runs the place is very helpful.

Couldn’t decide between 3 or 4 stars. Definitely 3 stars but not sure if it’s worthy of 4 stars (I’m pretty cheap with stars).
Me and a few people ordered the pork/​bacon thing, the spicy chicken with veggies, and a boodehjigae… which is basically a crazy version of kimchee chigae.
They were all good except the portions were nothing to be raving about. Sure call me fat or whatever but I was with 5 other people (thank god 3 of them were girls that can’t eat too much otherwise we’d be starving).
Service was normal for a Korean restaurant… which brings me to my mini rant…
why is it that Korean restaurants have a hard time with great service? my theory is that Korean diners usually ask for everything whenever they need it and they bring it to you only when you ask… but I feel like it shouldn’t be like that anymore.
Lets try to be unlike the rest and pay more attention to the service… then I feel like authentic Korean restaurants will have a fighting chance to become successful without the help of check please and other tv food shows.
I’d like to come back here again but it’s kind of out of the way. My advice would be to have slightly bigger portions and watch the water cups… they need to be filled constantly. Korean food is salty and spicy!
Oh… one last thing… the restaurant was pretty clean. Hope it stays that way.

Their special is possibly one of the best dishes you can share with your friends, being the perfect amalgam of spicy chicken and vegetables, stir-​fried at the table in front of you. Also great is the Korean standby, bibimbap. The stone bowl that it comes in evenly crisps all of the elements in the bowl, allowing you to cook the dish to your liking. In addition, the restaurant serves you a variety of spicy pickles that allow you to season your meal to your liking.
Service here is very prompt, with very courteous and helpful staff. We never had to wait long for anything, be it food, drink, or seasonings.