Dining
TAMPA — Driving east on Cypress Street, near the Interstate 275 overpass, the sign beckons.
From 100 yards down the road you can make out the capital letters: SRO.
Which is pretty much the way it is on a recent trip to Sa Ri One, an authentic family-style Korean barbecue restaurant.
The place is packed. Tight booths with high wooden backs are filled. It doesn’t matter that the restaurant is in a desolate area that takes determination to reach during the lunch-hour crush.
Or that Sa Ri One doesn’t provide the full-on sizzle of other Korean restaurants that prepare food tableside, on grills embedded in the tables.
The lack of a convenient location and the dearth of culinary pyrotechnics do not spoil the experience. The food couldn’t be any better.
And this from two jaded skeptics: myself, an editor in charge of police and court coverage, and Victoria Lim, senior consumer investigative reporter for WFLA, Channel 8.
Sa Ri One is the perfect hour-long antidote to our usual diet of mayhem. There are no pretensions here. Just some of the finest Korean food around.
“There is no ambience here,” says Lim. “It is basic, basic, basic. You’re here to chow down and eat.”
And eat we do.
Once we put in our order, it doesn’t take long before the food flies out of the kitchen, fast and furious.
The Seafood Soondooboo, a spicy claypot tofu soup, is redolent in chili paste. The Seafood Pajoun, a large scallion pancake with chunks of squid and shrimp, is enough for two to share.
The Chicken Katsu Bento Box features succulent strips of chicken, coated with panko bread crumbs and fried, along with dumplings and small scallion pancakes.
The Galbi, a huge portion of thinly sliced beef short ribs, is marinated in a sweet sauce and grilled to perfection.
And of course, there’s an array of traditional Korean side dishes, including rice, kimchee, spinach, bean sprouts and shredded dried fish in a sweet sauce.
The combination of swift delivery with the sheer enormity of our order is almost overwhelming. Within minutes, there are nearly a dozen items from which to choose.
We try the soup first. It’s subtly spicy, with a real kick of a finish.
“The broth and texture of the soup overall was light,” Lim says later. “Especially jampacked with all that silken tofu, mussels, octopus, shrimp and scallops. But it packs a pretty spicy punch.”
While dining, she offers some good advice: Take a few spoonfuls of rice and mix it in the soup.
“A good mouthful of rice cuts the spice,” Lim says.
The scallion pancake is a bit greasy, but the blend of scallion and seafood is a delicate complement to the soup.
It’s been several years since I ate beef, but, for duty and humanity, I ordered the Galbi. In a word: amazing.
With just enough sauce to make the tender meat savory and the ribs cut thin with the bone in the middle, it’s not a dish for those who don’t like to get their fingers sticky.
The Chicken Katsu was the only unspectacular dish. The juicy white meat was good, but it seemed almost bland compared to everything else we tried. It’s a good entry into Korean fare for the less adventurous.
Sidebar — Dining Review — Sa Ri One Korean BBQ
Bottom Line: Plentiful portions of spicy Korean food dished up quickly by a friendly wait staff.
Where: 3940 W. Cypress St., Tampa
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