Highly recommended Japanese charcoal BBQ all-you-can-eat experience featuring Matsusaka pork and seafood!

Text & Photos byShadow

We’ve always gone to regular yakiniku restaurants when craving grilled meat, but after a few visits, we wanted to try something new. After checking online reviews, Tōtarō Japanese Charcoal BBQ had decent ratings, with branches not only in northern and southern Kaohsiung but also in other cities. Based on the feedback, we finally chose the Guangxi branch in southern Kaohsiung for our meal.

Tōtarō Japanese Charcoal BBQ is an all-you-can-eat restaurant with mid-range pricing—450 NTD for lunch and 498 NTD for dinner, with no additional service charge. The restaurant isn’t very large. As you enter, the right side has a shoe-removal dining area, while the inner section is for larger group reservations. On the left near the entrance, there are also two non-shoe-removal dining spots, so you can choose based on your preference.

Each table is equipped with a range hood and a gas burner, suggesting a teppanyaki-style grilling setup.

This is the inner non-shoe-removal dining area, perfect for small group gatherings!

The menu is already placed on the table. Actually, we didn’t really use it to order at first—except that we don’t eat beef. The staff serves a mixed platter first, and then you can order more from the menu once you’ve finished those.

Besides a decent selection of meats and seafood, the other options aren’t very extensive. But since our focus was on the grilled meat, we didn’t mind the limited choices elsewhere.

This is the ordering sheet—you check the items and hand it to the staff. Since we went during an off-peak time, the food came out fairly quickly. If anything was missed, a polite reminder usually resulted in it being served.

Unlimited free black tea.

In addition to black tea, there’s also unlimited ice cream, orange juice, and winter melon tea.

They also have Coke and Sprite. While the drink options aren’t extensive, they’re all our favorites, which made it feel quite good.

Chilled Coke and Sprite pair perfectly with grilled meat!

For dipping the grilled meat, besides the specialized yakiniku soy sauce, there’s also a miso-like sauce. Those who like garlic or chili can adjust to their taste.

You can also sprinkle sea salt or black pepper directly on the grilled meat as an alternative way to enjoy it.

The cold onion salad is quite appetizing—the onions are sweet without being overly pungent, making it a tasty side dish.

The Korean kimchi is just average in flavor.

I have to praise the restaurant’s hot pot—it’s the best among the few yakiniku places we’ve been to that offer hot pot. It’s based on miso soup, and the broth is well-made, smooth and delicious. I drank several bowls in a row, and it’s the only place where we kept refilling the soup and adding more hot pot ingredients.

The seafood that came first looked a bit tricky to grill, so we threw it all into the hot pot to cook.

These are the additional seafood items we ordered later. The staff put them all together in a big bowl, which we also dumped into the miso hot pot. While waiting for the meat, we could snack on the hot pot to stave off hunger.

Then we started grilling. To be honest, the grill is the one downside—the square grill has a volcanic mud exterior, so it doesn’t get too hot to touch, but the grilling area is quite small. As you can see, after placing just two slices of meat, it almost covers the entire mesh with charcoal. You can only grill a little at a time, which annoyed my already impatient husband.

The restaurant first serves a basic meat platter. Our strategy was to start with the thinnest pork belly—it cooks quickly due to its thinness, so you don’t have to wait long.

Next, we grilled the pork collar. Compared to the fattiness of pork belly, pork collar is less greasy, which I really liked.

The Matsusaka pork is crispy and has thick slices, making it incredibly satisfying—we must have ordered several plates of this.

Pork ribs are a bit thick and harder to grill, but they still taste pretty good. After going through the first round of meats, we asked the staff to bring more of the ones we liked.

This plate is the initial mixed platter served by the restaurant, including chicken wings, pork ribs, and chicken hearts.

The vegetables are for wrapping the meat, balancing nutrition and cutting the greasiness.

I like to wrap some Korean kimchi or sliced meat with vegetables, or even adding cold onion salad would be nice.

Once the sliced meat was almost finished, we moved on to grilling seafood. Of course, we started with shrimp. After being "educated" by several barbecue joints, I’ve pretty much figured out the trick to grilling seafood perfectly and deliciously. For the shrimp, we just sprinkled some sea salt on both sides and grilled them until they turned red—ready to eat.

Still not full, we ordered another plate. Just the shrimp alone was incredibly satisfying.

Every time I grill squid, I’m never sure when it’s done, so I always end up overcooking it a bit. The result is that the squid isn’t as crispy as it should be.

Sardines are tricky to grill, but once you master the technique, you can still get them looking great—no burst bellies or burnt spots.

After eating our fill, it was finally time for something sweet. The cheese pastry puffed up quickly with the heat and smelled amazing.

Eating barbecue always seems to call for some Japanese pickles and vinegar miso soup. This time, we had a small side of pickled radish and a light miso soup. After the heavy meal, the refreshing taste was a nice contrast. The rice was fluffy and the miso soup wasn’t overly salty—just right.

There were four flavors of ice cream, but only my husband and one stomach could handle more ice cream. I was really too full.

All in all, we spent less than a thousand NT dollars. Compared to the last time we went to a certain yakiniku restaurant where we paid over a thousand but didn’t get the same dining quality, this place has great cost-performance. Aside from the issue of the grill being a bit small, everything else lived up to online reviews. The meat quality is solid, and what left the deepest impression on me was the miso hot pot. I’ve never been so focused on eating the hot pot while having barbecue. The broth was flavorful and delicious—I highly recommend this place for a hearty meat-filled meal.

Address: No. 498, Guangxi Road, Qianzheng District, Kaohsiung City
Phone: 07-3383871
Business Hours: 11:30–15:00, 17:00–23:00
Price: NT$450/person at lunch, NT$498/person at dinner
 

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