If you’re an indecisive person, don’t go to Arisu. Their menu will start giving you heart palpitations as you realize you may never make it to the halfway point. Korean barbeque, Korean dishes of many kinds, sushi, and even more are displayed in full glory. Move over Pickle Barrel, this menu has you beat.

Let me try to help you out here. With cooking stations at every table, Korean barbeque is a natural choice. Go for the porky and piggy set for two ($59.99) that offers three cuts: pork belly, shoulder blade, and honeycomb (like pork belly but more tender). Grill up the pork and tuck slices into the lettuce wraps along with sauces and a bit of the scallion soy.

The set even comes with a host of sides: a puffy egg custard that needs to be eaten quickly; corn smothered in cheese and butter; a host of traditional banchan, steamed rice, and even fresh vegetables for grilling. You’ll have all the bases covered.

You’ll want to start off with a set before adding on extras like chicken ($18.99) to Korean barbeque. There’s not much that arrives with it, just a piece of marinated chicken leg. After all, to miss out on the steamed egg custard is a shame.

If you’re dining as one or don’t like the idea of having to cook for yourself, order Arisu’s porterhouse steak ($41.99 special price; regular is $46.99). Obviously, it wouldn’t rival a steakhouse, but I found it was prepared better than HK café places – the steak was a thick cut and cooked to a rare / medium rare. And it’s a hefty portion complete with mashed potatoes, grilled vegetables, and a bowl of spicy tofu soup.

For those dining as a group, getting a bunch of dishes to share is ideal. The seafood pancake ($35.99 for large) was one of the better ones I’ve had - the batter airy and pan-fried forming tons of crispy edges. Large chunks of seafood, scallions, and vegetables are strewn throughout so there’s a great ratio of pancake to filling.

The cheese tteokbokki ($31.99 for large) consists of soft chewy rice sticks and fish balls tossed in a mild spicy sauce (Arisu also offers a spicier version). The rice cakes are surprisingly delicate (perhaps they use the frozen versus dried variety) and being covered in cheese gives the dish an almost creamy finish.

Only the fried chicken breast ($33.99 for large) was a bit disappointing. I liked that it was freshly prepared to the point it was burn-your-mouth hot. But it also wasn’t overly exciting… a simple salt and pepper seasoning with the breading almost too light so it wasn’t very crunchy.

Unlike other Korean barbeque places along Bloor, Arisu also wasn’t too busy, which is surprising because their food was decent and the service great. Perhaps it’s because they’re further away from the bar area, but our Friday visit was relatively quiet, and they could even take walk-in clients.

The separators used in the dining room, provided some privacy to allow our group to get boisterous without becoming disruptive. After all, it takes time to order, so you can get through a bottle of soju before a lick of food arrives. Who knows, two bottles in and you may just be ordering the full menu.

Aside from soup-based noodles, a comforting dish I crave in the winter is pork bone soup. There’s almost a primal sense of survival in picking up the massive hunk of bone in your hands and trying to get to as many of the meaty bits as possible, dissecting and sucking until it’s picked clean. Kam ja tang is served in most Korean restaurants, but Owl of Minerva introduced the dish to me and it’s where I return for a fix.

As difficult as it is to transport, Owl does delivery and takeout - the kam ja tang ($10.99) is vacuum sealed so that no drop of the fragrant soup is lost. Without the hot stone bowl, it’s warm on arrival, so we always re-heat it in a pot before tucking in. It needs to be enjoyed in its full glory: blistering hot, burning the fingers, and stinging the tongue. No pain, no delicious gain.

While waiting for the pork bone to re-heat, snack on an order of gu man du ($10.99). The deep-fried dumplings still surprisingly crispy and hot despite also being entombed in plastic. Truthfully, I’d much rather Owl switch to a piece of tin foil to wrap the beef dumpling instead of using so much plastic. We can all benefit from less waste and if someone wanted to re-heat the dumplings in the toaster oven, the tin foil will even save the customer a preparation step.

Back to the pork bone. Once it’s bubbling hot and placed into a bowl, here’s how I like to enjoy my kam ja tang: I help cool it slightly by placing a couple of pieces of kimchi into the bowl. I prefer the fermented cabbage hot and enjoy that extra bit of umami spice that the sauce adds to the broth. Then, it’s a hands-on marathon – first picking off the easy bits of meat with chopsticks, before switching to the primal eating ritual described earlier.

In between it all, I place bit-sized pieces of steam rice on a spoon before adding some broth to the utensil and getting a delicious mouthful of the salty garlicky soup. Some like to add all the rice into the broth and mix it with the meat, creating a Korean congee. I like mine separated, bite by bite. To each their own.

Once the pork bone is done, it’s down to the cabbage with rice. And if I’m feeling particularly ravenous, the hunks of soft potatoes will round out the meal. A meal from Owl of Minerva leaves you stuffed and almost uncomfortably full. It’s my quintessential meal during the winter, where a girl needs to eat to survive.