When looking for fun places to eat in Amsterdam, our tour guide on a canal tour recommended two places, one of which being GAJA Korean BBQ. At the time, we did not know it was an all you can eat BBQ joint, but were very excited to discover this! You can either order off the standard menu or you can choose the all you can eat option, which does only allow one dessert per person and doesn’t include drinks. That’s what we ended up going with. There is a two hour eating limit and everything is ordered through scanning a QR code, where you can also allow others from your table to join the order, and you can see who orders what. If you aren’t familiar with Korean BBQ, you are able to cook everything in front of yourselves.
Dann and I quite enjoy sharing, so we did round after round of food at GAJA Korean BBQ, and I honestly cannot remember everything we ordered, but we do have a bunch of highlights. I ordered the drink named after the venue, which came out blue and changed purple when I added in a small bit of the ginger beer that came with it. This was such a cute experience and the drink was fantastic! I really liked the bulgogi beef strips, which were so tasty – we ended up with three orders! Dann’s favorite meat was the chunks of sirloin steak, which cooked very easily on the grill in the center.
We also did try some pre-made items like the crispy kimchi pancakes at GAJA Korean BBQ, which were so full of flavor and a little spicy. On the flip side, the kimchi rice was not so great, feeling mushy like the rice was over cooked. If you do not finish something, you do have to pay 2 euros as a fee, but we explained that it wasn’t cooked to our liking and were fine. Dann quite liked the marinated duck and the white fish, which was cooked inside of a metal container we put on the grill – it fell a part and tasted so much like butter. I also ordered a beef soup that had fall-apart beef – so tender – which I very much enjoyed.
We ate our fill and were too full to actually get dessert, but they’ve got a bunch of different ice creams and small desserts to go at the end of your meal. The staff were quick to take away empty plates and bring out new ones, so it was a very smooth experience. You can also see the canal right from the window, which is beautiful and provides a fantastic mood to your dining experience.