It takes a bit of skill and timing to enjoy a perfect meal at Oh! My Stone, where your meat comes in a raw 120g ball and you have to manually grill chunks of it on a stone. When the meal fir st arrives, the stone is so hot at 500 degrees Celsius that the staff suggests you grill each side for only three seconds for a slightly crispy on the outside and raw on the inside experience. But you inevitably will burn some of the meat because it sticks to the stone. Luckily there is a mini barbecue hood at each seat that sucks up the smoke from directly above the stone.
Things get easier when the stone cools down a bit. While it probably isn’t the restaurant’s intent, at least you can proceed with less pressure. Eventually, however, the stone’s heat drops below cooking temperature and you have to ask the staff to give you another one, and the process repeats again. Eventually you will figure it out, but is the food good enough to give this place a second try?
The concept for self-grilled, ball-shaped ground beef originated in Japan’s Fukuoka, but has been popular in South Korea in recent years. Aside from the all-you-can-drink miso soup, Oh My Stone! indeed leans toward the Korean flair, from the decor to the background music to the kimchi side dishes. Despite drawing massive queues when it first opened in May, the place was mostly empty during a visit on a Tuesday evening — perhaps a testament to its nature as a novelty joint.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
In addition to the US choice ground beef dish, which comes in several variations (plain, cheese, egg, garlic in various combinations), the restaurant also offers pork and shrimp options as well as rice bowls. It is not clear how the pork and shrimp would work, since they need to be thoroughly cooked. We chose the beef with egg and cheese (NT$288) and the beef with egg and garlic (NT$298), plus a two-person set meal (NT$150) that included baked cheesy mushrooms (NT$120 a la carte) and two drinks.
Each meal comes with three dipping sauces. Diners choose between the A set (secret barbecue sauce, honey mustard and spicy mayonnaise) and B set (spicy ketchup, wasabi sauce and honey mustard). There is also unlimited rice and miso soup, which is self-serve.
When cooked right, the beef is extremely juicy and tender and the hot stone gives it a bit of a pleasant crispy coating. The rest of the ingredients don’t really stand out. The egg is rather bland both in taste and texture, and while the generous amount of melted cheese helps a bit, it really isn’t memorable. There’s an inexplicable chunk of enoki mushrooms hidden under the ball of meat, which has become an afterthought by the time you notice it.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
The sauces are weak, as most of them have no staying power and give way to the meat juices immediately. The mustard is just sweet with no kick, and the wasabi is not wasabi at all but a standard soy-based barbecue sauce with zero pungency. By contrast, the ketchup and mayonnaise are both quite spicy, with the latter resembling more of a sweet tartar sauce laden with chilis. And finally, the “secret” barbecue sauce is so sugary that you can’t taste anything else. Luckily, the meat is so good that you don’t really need the sauces.
The mushroom dish came in a escargot-style bowl slathered with cheese. The mushrooms were juicy but did not have much taste, and while the cheese was generous, the texture did not pair well with the watery mushrooms.
To answer the earlier question about whether or not to give Oh! My Stone a second try. While the meat was excellent, the overall experience was not good enough for a repeat visit to perfect that stone-grilling technique.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
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