ToWoo Korean Charcoal BBQ

"Barbecue'' is the universal word for a good-ol' get-together. It could be on a mate's veranda with test cricket droning from the radio, or in this beautifully designed, three-month-old Korean barbecue restaurant. Here, every sturdy timber table gets its own little barbecuer. Called a hwa-ro, it's an urn, with feet, and it's loaded with white-hot charcoal. It's like 20 individual barbecue parties going on at once, in the one venue.

The sleek, all-black rooms have distinguishing feature walls: a wood mosaic downstairs - referencing charcoal's origins - and a hand-drawn chalk panorama upstairs. Both rooms have a canopy of extendable exhaust fans set over each hwa-ro to suck up any smoke. But, smoke emissions are minimal, with your choice of meat grilled with just heat: no smoke, no fire. The theory is that cooked this way, meat is permeated with a charcoal scent and retains its moisture, giving it a melty texture.

ToWoo's pork set feeds two or three. It includes a mixed entree plate of all-fried, all-golden, all-delicious pieces of crab claw, prawn, lotus chips and fried chicken. It also includes a salad and six roll-ups of pork belly strips, each prepared with a different marinade. Staff do the grilling for you, theoretically, from the lightest flavour to the strongest; ours was cooked according to whichever was nearest the waiter's tongs. However it comes, it's dramatic and engaging, with, say, a red wine marinated strip that's unfurled, snipped in half, then sizzled and turned periodically (for about five minutes). Working through green-tea marinated pork, yellow curry, blackbean and, finally, chilli.

The grill, which is designed to leach out the oil inherent in pork (there's a different grill for beef), gets changed a few times. The differences in flavour are subtle, but there are definite degrees of char and variations in texture - although varying cooking times may be at play too. On our visit, one waiter was less attentive, perhaps leaving a batch cooking a touch long.

There are sides, of course. The ever-present slightly sour kimchi (which aids digestion, apparently), sweet-and-sour cucumber crescents, shredded red cabbage and crunchy-creamy seaweed noodles (these are great and ''good diet food''). There are sauces galore plus other kitchen-cooked mains that come in one deluge of dishes making for a colourful, festive spread and a lively, chopstick-wielding all-in.

Someone bursts bibimbap's egg yolk and mixes it through to the crunchy bottom; someone else slices thick, crisp pancake inlaid with parsley and octopus, dredges it in soy, then makes a play for the sides and salad. It's interactive, and it's fun.

Like most barbecues, ToWoo is BYO. It's the kind of place where you can also BYO a birthday cake. And, being indoors means Melbourne's fickle weather is no threat.

Do … Have a look upstairs at the intricate chalk mural; the owner's mum hand-draws a new one every three months.
Don't … Leave your run to the nearby bottle shop too late, it shuts at 7.30pm (8.30pm Fri and Sat; 7pm Sun)
Dish … BBQ set (pork or beef)
Vibe … Backyard