Sasaya Bistro

I would give 3.5 stars to this Korean/​Taiwanese restaurant.
Talk about what I like the most about this restaurant first and the least favourite things the last.
Service — excellent! The Taiwanese servers took good care of the orders and customers’ needs.
Pricing — reasonable pricing for bigger portion of the food. Minimum order is $ 3.50 per person. It is a little bit cheaper than other Korean/​Taiwanese restaurants.
Food — there are a lot of varieties on the menu. The most popular dishes are their hot pots. My friends and I ordered seafood fish hot pot, seafood udon pot and seafood kimchi pot for dinner. All the of them were good. We just waited for a long time for the food. We realized that customers at other tables were the same who had been waiting for a long time for their food as well. Perhaps the chefs needed to put a lot of time and effort to prepare and cook the food in the kitchen?
Ambiance — family type of atmosphere. The interior design is not fancy at all or there is no renovation inside. It looks a bit old inside overall.
Location — further away from Kingsway and not a lot of people know about this place. They might want to do some advertisements online and offline (my recommendations).
It’s ok to go back for meals. That’s my conclusion.

We always come here and order the same thing, seafood udon hot pot. It’s super satisfying on a cold day. The broth is always very flavorful and full of lots of yummy meat, seafood and veggies. I’ve tried other dishes here, and didn’t enjoy them, so I’ve decided to just stick with the hot pot. The last time we came here, they really cheaped out on the quantity of meat. I’m hoping it was a one time thing though.

Korean style Taiwanese food? Here’s something different.
Parking is available directly in front on Royal Oak, as well as along Rumble.
The inside is quite bare bones. It honestly reminded me of a classroom in Asia, but with peach-​coloured walls. Adding to this theme is the giant air conditioners in the corner, and the utilitarian tables that can almost pass as desks. The dining area is quite large, and the tables can easily be arranged to large classes, I mean groups of people.
The place looks like it’s run by a family (mom, dad, daughter?). Staff were helpful.
Even though the sign in front of the restaurant says «Korean style tofu hot pot», what they really mean is «Korean food with a slight Taiwanese twist». The «hot pot» bit is quite the misnomer in this case. The bibimbap (notice this is a Korean dish, not a Taiwanese one) I had was really a sizzling plate style that would normally be reserved for BBQ meats. No stone bowl either. With that said, the food was organized into dainty little sections (bean sprouts, turnip strips, kimchi etc.), with an inverted «bowl» of rice in the middle, and a raw egg on top. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to mix it all up and ruin the look, or eat it by sections. The food looked quite dainty and photogenic — almost like one of those wax dishes used in displays. All of the items were quite tasty. The plate was hot enough to slightly burn the rice into crispy form, but not as much as I would’ve liked. Special mention for this dish. It also came a side of seaweed (miso?) soup.
This place also has many other types of food, such as noodle soup, and seafood. The pictures in the menu look quite tasty too. I’ll definitely be back to try some more dishes, and maybe their bubble tea.
The only downside to this place is the location. There’s actually quite a bit of stuff at this intersection (Royal Oak and Rumble), but not too many people seem to know about it. If this place were right on Kingsway, I’d bet it would do quite well.
Recommended.

The waitress on the front desk’s manner is sooooooooo bad. I did not buy any food and just left.

moved away a year ago, but keep thinking about how much i love the veggie hot pot at this place! great place, great staff. enjoy!

I’ve been coming to this restaurant with my family for years and it’s always a good fall-​back for dinner if we don’t know of anywhere else to go. I think theyre trying to be a mix between korean and taiwanese food but i just basically associate it with being taiwanese. I always order their spicy seafood tofu pot. It has pork, udon, tofu, seafood, veggies, and a yummy spicy broth. You can order a bowl of rice on the side too if you want. It’s about $ 8 and you get a decent-​sized portion (I get full off it) and the flavor of the broth is really good and the pork is always marinated so well. I love tofu also but the stuff I can do without is the seafood that is basically just there for the sake of being there. Their salty peppery chicken is also very good but sometimes its a lot more batter and skin than actual chicken.
They also have another dish where you can order the seafood tofu pot as well as a stir fried pork on the side with rice and its only a few dollars more expensive but you get everything in it and it’s all really good.
The service can sometimes be a little bit slow but the décor and everything is nice. Be prepared though because if its busy it can be hard to find parking!

Good comfort Taiwanese/​lite Korean dishes. Prety much the same food as similar places on Kingsway but without the noise and MSG. Fast takeouts too. A genuinely good place for what it is and a place you can go regularly without making you feel sick.
(some dishes are better than others; make a wise choice)

I’m confused… Is this a Korean joint or a Taiwanese joint? The menu doesn’t help either. They sell bi bim bap and kimchi hotpots but they also have a menu category called Taiwanese «Cusion», WTH is that? Anyways, my crime partner and I we’re craving for some Korean grub and we were in the vicinity. I ordered the Kimchi seafood hotpot and she ordered crispy wontons and bi bim bap. For a place which is almost empty on a weekend dinner service, it took them almost half an hour for our food. The kimchi seafood hotpot is ok, spicy but not too overwhelming. The bi bim bap is mediocre, the fried wontons were frozen dumplings you can get from any TnT. Service is very casual. Just because it’s not busy I don’t think it’s ok for servers to sit on tables, read newspapers and sip bubbletea, but that’s just me.

The review below really had me worried for a minute, but I’m glad I decided to try the place out anyways (that and I was already seated).
We ordered the sizzling BBQ Pork Plate & Curry Pork Chop w/​Rice. The «BBQ Pork» dish is actually more like «Bulgogi»…the name is a bit misleading, but the dish itself was actually very tasty. The curry was just okay” as I found the breading on the pork chop a bit too gooey, but the curry sauce was really good so I’d reconsider ordering the non-​breaded version.
Service was super friendly and the food came out quickly. Would definitely consider coming back to try some of their soup noodles which seemed to be a popular item at the other tables.

I ordered a bi bim bap for takeout and the rice seemed like it was leftover from the day before, and instead of a nice fried egg on top, the egg was just mashed into the rice.
A pretty pathetic bi bim bap by any standards.
I’ve had one better meal here before, but nothing would make me want to go back despite the fact that they’re steps from my house.