New Totowa

This was my first time trying the soondubu (seafood tofu stew) and I have to stay it was pretty tasteless. It is a «seafood» dish but there was barely any seafood, and the oysters weren’t cleaned out so I tasted some sand. It looked like they placed a couple pieces of seafood in the stew for looks, but when there wasn’t enough they put corns and peas to fill it. I was really disappointed by this lifeless dish.
However their donkatsu is always a good dish to play it safe.

CHECK YOUR FOOD IF YOU GET TAKEOUT.
Their food is good, but their service is crap, especially for take out. I ordered a japchae dupbap and there was no JAPCHAE. that’s the freaking dish i ordered and it’s missing the main ingredient?! I had to eat just the fried rice… So I check my bag every time I get take out from here. Next time was okay, but the last time I went, I checked the bag again, ordered Jaeyuk dupbap and there’s NO MEAT. It looked like the restaurant took someone’s leftovers from dining in and threw it on top of some rice and wrapped it up to go. I brought this to the attention of the manager (?) and he took it and had them add more, the right amount… and apologized and gave me some free soda. How do you let something like that go out the door? Do they not check the food when it’s done?
Utter disappointment. food is good when it’s prepared right, but that’s WHEN they get it right. Time to go to bunsiknara.

Used to come to the old location all the time for my jjajjanmyun fill, but no longer. The new location seems to have downgraded the quality of food (unclear if the cooking staff/​recipes have changed?), and the three chances I gave the new location have each greeted me with the distinct smell of stale water and poor ventilation. It’s hard to describe the exact scent, but it’s in the same terminal as sewage.
I don’t know if the service was poor, understaffed, or both, but there was more than one occasion where one of our orders was simply missing, and it was difficult to get the attention of any of the wait staff.
The free self serve at the front (that seems to be empty every time I visit), and the large portions (of mediocre food) isn’t enough to bring me back a fourth time. Sad times.

Best place for Pork Katsu Platter for years. It’s actually been my first time trying out this new location but I liked the old location better. This place is bigger and they were definitely understaffed. Food came out late, we had to wait a long time to get what we want such as glass of water and the bill. The complimentary side dishes were dried up like it’s been sitting outside for hours
BUT the food was still bomb, really

Kinda a standard Korean restaurant in Pal Park. It’s a pretty affordable option in the very Korean area. The restaurant was nice, the men’s bathroom in the basement was not, it felt like I stepped into a third world country. Also, they have free self serve ice cream at the counter.
The food:
Pork Cutlet– The cutlet was humongous! It was enough to share with two people, it was nice and crunchy but the pork itself wasn’t really that noticeable. It also had this odd ketchup like sauce on top that I thought was too sweet. Overall, a decent dish.
Korean Roll with Beef– Also known as Kimbap I enjoyed the flavor as a whole, I enjoyed all the ingredients except the ground beef, the beef really had no flavor and had a very dry texture. Think the Kimbap with another filling would have been better.
Spicy Rice Cake Stew with Sticky Noodle– Their ddukbokki was kinda sad. The chewy noodles were annoyingly chew, the sauce seemed very one dimensional and flat. The sauce was sweet and did have a kick but the kick faded rather quickly. I also didn’t like their rice cakes, I felt they should have been cooked more and needed to absorb more flavor.

Huge portions!!! We shared the ddeokbokki (spelling?) which is a spicy rice cake dish. It was SUPER CHEESY! I never had cheesy ddeokbokki before… life changing!
After all of the cheesy goodness + the free kimchi, salad, and barley tea, I was stuffed. However, I went on to finish a fried-​rice-​wrapped-​in-​an-​egg concoction.

New location has been visited! Much cleaner, seems bigger, definitely can seat more people. Still love the food. Service left a little to be desired but overall it was great!

I don’t really have any strong opinion towards this restaurant. It wasn’t super amazing, but at the same time it wasn’t terribly bad.
Totowa pretty much serves what Koreans like to eat as snack, which is also referred as «boon-​sik.» However, totowa made Boon-​sik seem like more of a meal– meaning, they served in pretty much generous portion.
My friends and I visited this place and ordered: pork cutlet, cheese dukbokki, fried rice, and a seafood cream pasta.
Pork cutlet was pretty good. Unlike Japanese style pork cutlets, the pork cutlet offered in Totowa was pretty unique. The sauce was spread on top of cutlet, and it made a great harmony and balance between the meat and the sauce. I loved how the generous the portion was.
Unfortunately, there were nothing to recall about other foods we had.
It’s a pretty chill place to hang out with friends.

Love their food! They keep moving, but the place gets cleaner and bigger everytime they do!
Love the Don Katsu and Korean Ramyun. (Now I’m craving it)

Yeah made the mistake to come here again. Totally not worth it. I ordered the same exact thing a few months ago and the portion was obviously wayyyy smaller. What a shame. The original Totowa was always good.

The Story: They moved! Down the street! Came here with boyfriend for some dinner!
Food: They have a good variety of fusion and traditional Korean dishes. Comfortable and Casual dining.
I ordered the jjampong and it was HUGEE! I took ½ of it home.
Décor: I feel its more open compare to their last location. Definitely an improvement.
Price: Dishes are not expensive. Dinner for my boyfriend and I was $ 25 with tip!
Service: This is where it kinda lacks. Flagging down someone is near impossible when they’re busy.
Parking & Finding the Place: If you’re lucky enough to get parking on the main street but they usually have side street parking. I think this location has a parking lot in the back. Kinda creepy for my taste at night.
Additional Thoughts/​Tips: Granted service isn’t that great… I love the food. Its quick, easy and nommy.

Bigger, cleaner, newer, same food. Can’t ask for me. I didn’t notice the price increase, regardless it is still super affordable.
The ice cream machine was broken though. Hopefully that’s just a temporary glitch.
Mush haves are the donkatsu (HUGE, Enough for three), the dokbuki (with the ramen or chewy noodles), and the fried dumplings with the cold noodles. It can probably feed four people but the three of us stuffed ourselves silly.
Service is also pretty friendly. Maybe I’m just too used to ctown courtesy.
I am so glad you’re still around. You made crossing the GWB worthwhile.

I loved this place since middle school and it was one of my favorite korean restaurant of all time.
Recently, I started to disappointed by the quality of the foods. Whenever I order something, I regret except pork cutlet (even this is not as good as before).
Their quality got so low and taste below average. What happened to them?
I am looking for new Korean restaurant and most likely will not go back.

Above average Korean food for really great prices! We split 5 dishes and it came out to $ 63.
The pork cutlet and spicy rice cakes are a must!
Service was also very good but I had to minus a star because there was a piece of plastic in our salad, however the waitress was very apologetic and replaced it.

Good portions. Good food. Menu in Korean and English. Have the menu separated into sections. A section for often shared stuff like dumplings and kimbap. Sections for main dishes, rice, and noodles. All are very similarly just a main course sized portion of a meat over rice of in a stew. Last section is «fusion». One example of something from that section is like a chicken parm with crabmeat on top. Go figure. Nothing bad to say about it. Not 5 stars because it was satisfying but nothing to write home about. Only write Unilocal about.

There’s a saying that goes «if you’re in the Palisades Park area and unsure of where to eat, go to Totowa.» Ok, maybe I made that up but I’d say it’s pretty accurate and served me well.
For the non-​Korean folk, I think the best way to describe Totowa is to call it a Korean diner. They basically offers a huge variety of Korean dishes (both comfort and traditional food) and surprisingly, they all taste very good.
Some of the many highlights on the menu are the Cheese Donkatsu (Pork Katsu), Tukpokki (spicy rice cake) and Jeyook Udon Bokeum (Spicy Pork w/​Udon noodles). All their dumplings are also made in-​house and they are delicious as well. Their traditional jigaes (soups) are also excellent too. All the food portions are huge too so if you’re not a fatty like me, you will have leftovers to bring home with you.
The one knock I have on them is that they give very little banchan (side dishes) and they aren’t good. It is forgivable since they aren’t going for the traditional Korean restaurant but at the same time, their kimchee isn’t very good either and that leaves your meal feeling a little incomplete.
After you’re done with your meal, you can help yourself to their ice cream which is always a great way to finish off your meal.
The restaurant itself is pretty clean except they have a slight gnat problem which is extremely bothersome to deal with when you’re eating. Their old location had it even worse but it looks like a few of the gnats came along for the move. Service is pretty efficient and fast.
Overall, like I stated from the beginning, you really can’t go wrong with Totowa.

This place used to be in a run down location that smelled like dirty rags. All my friends went for the ridiculous portion of pork cutler.
They moved to a new location so I thought is give them another chance. I only had an hour for lunch before having to return back to work so I ordered even before I sat down. They took 45 minutes to bring out my coworkers dishes and COMPLETELY FORGOT mine. Everyone was starving and I was so upset. They offered to make it for me when I only had 15 mins left. I said uhhhh no thanks I won’t even have time to enjoy it. I ordered a spicy noodle soup so it’s not like I could’ve saved it for later. We noticed that the table across from us had one gentleman was ¾ done eating while the other waited for his food.
I will not be returning to this place.

I describe this type of Korean food (boon sik) Korean diner food. Just like Jersey diners have a huge variety of dishes, but you always end up ordering pretty much the same thing every time, there is a large variety on totowa menu, but a few stand out go to dishes, like don katsu, jjolmyun, dukbokki, fried rice, and many cheese covered dishes. You would not see these dishes in your typical Korea restaurants that do BBQs. My usual go to is chicken katsu. The dish is HUGE and easily feeds 2 people. I have yet to finish everything on the plate even when I share with another person. I ordered veggie gimbap as an app today, and found it light and delicious. The dipping sauce it came with with a hint of wasabi was amazing and made the gimbap 100% better.
This is a casual, fun place to pig out. Saturday during lunch hour had about 15 minute wait. After 2pm, the crowd thinned out and the place was less bustling. I suggest avoiding peak hours if you don’t want to wait, but the wait isn’t too bad.
I only wish they would offer slightly better side dishes. I prefer the fresh side dishes that cap udon offers, but for chicken katsu, totowa is my only destination.

This place is where you should go if you want bunsik (inexpensive, simple) Korean food. They have a variety from donkatsu to soups and noodles. I especially like their chickenkatsu, it is always golden and crispy. The seafood fried rice is also really good! Plus, they give you free ice cream :). Good to come for lunch on a Sunday or a weekday dinner date with a friend.

Big fan of this spot. I thought it was going to be pretty small when I saw the place from the front but the restaurant is huge and the menu has so many options. The menu can satisfy anyone’s taste buds/​cravings and the best part is that the portions are huge. We ordered dumplings, seafood fried rice as well as budae jigae and we couldn’t finish the meal. I will be coming back here for sure an highly recommend this place.

This was my first time coming to this place at their new location. I can’t really say anything negative about this place. The spot is really clean. The staff is polite and welcoming. The food portions are big enough to feed two people. And the food comes out fairly quick. They usually give you free ice cream with your meal but we arrived very close to closing time so I can’t complain. I believe they take the last order around 10:30pm so if you’re planning on a late dinner be sure to arrive before that.

Excellent service and kind staff. My husband and I arrived 15 minutes prior to the actual opening time. It opens at 11:30AM on Saturdays everyone. We arrived early but they allowed us to go in, choose any table we liked and browse through the menu. We ordered cheesy spicy rice cakes, and two orders of tonkatsu. We actually ordered one tonkatsu and one hamburger steak but the steak wasn’t available, therefore, we got two tonkatsus instead (that’s the only reason why I’m giving Totowa a 4-​star rather than 5). The serving size was huge! We ate only half of each dish. Lucky for us, we took everything to go and had it for dinner! Under $ 50 for a whole day’s of food – that’s pretty good.

I was so excited to come try some real Korean food with two of my girlfriends the other night and left New Totowa completely disappointed.
We arrived at New Totowa and didn’t have someone approach to our table for about 15 mins. Already a bad sign. Finally after being ignored we were approached by our waitress who asked for our orders, we decided on shrimp fried rice, fried dumplings, pork cutlet with cheese (Confirmed 3 times with cheese and no sauce to the waitress), my friends ordered some dishes that I honestly had no clue what they were (some type of stew that they asked for spicy and some spicy rice/​fish cake dish.) The woman giggled at how much we ordered and asked if we were sure we wanted all that and at no point informed us that we had just ordered 7 meals. We were under the impression that most were just appetizers. We also asked for our appetizers to be brought out first.
I tried a little bit of everything that came out: fried noodles wrapped in seaweed were surprisingly good and crisp, the spicy fish cake dish set my mouth on fire as expected, the fried dumplings were just ok and a bit greasy. Not even 5 mins after bringing out the appetizers out came 7 HUGE meals, honestly it was embarrassing and to have the servers giggle at you is just a sign of being unprofessional and childish behavior.
Now the cherry on the cake was when they brought out my pork cutlet with cheese there was no cheese, instead they doused the cutlet in some red sauce. I immediately pointed out to the waitress that that wasn’t what I ordered and asked for her to exchange the dish for what I had ordered, her response was «NO». I was shocked at her answer and asked again thinking she didn’t hear me clearly she repeated louder «NO» if I wasn’t with my girlfriends I would of made a scene and walked out immediately. How do you treat your customers that way? Especially after we discussed I wanted the one with cheese and no sauce 3 times! Not to mention my friend who ordered the spicy stew ended up with something completely different as well and was extremely sweet. We think they gave her bulgogi stew which was extremely sweet and not spicy at all as she requested. She brought that to our waitress’ attention and once again when she asked for what she ordered she was told «NO» and then the waitress started speaking Korean to our friend and almost seemed annoyed with her.
I can not stress enough how rude and disrespectful our waitress was to us if I could give ZERO stars I would. Will NEVER be back.

I have not been to the new location yet, have been a bunch of times before they moved.
It’s pretty much my go-​to place if I’m traveling through Pal Park, which is not that often. But everyone I have brought here does like it, and that has been exclusively Koreans I believe.
The food is pretty good, well seasoned. The portions are RIDICULOUS in that they are huge and do not order one entrée for every person in your party, it will be a waste!
Bunshik food, of course. I love their jjolmyun, but I am a sucker for that stuff. Last time I was there I tried their naengmyun too which isn’t that bad, it has that nice tart taste that I love as well.
Don’t know why this is marked with two dollar signs, it’s pretty cheap.
Service is whatever, it’s very casual. Always came with 6 or more people and they do fine.
Also, there’s free ice cream! But at night, they seem to run out: L
**please excuse picture, only instagram pics.

I’m not certain if this is under new management or not but I am not at all impressed. The new location of totowa looks great but I feel like the service has changed. The appetizers has definitely changed, which is quite upsetting. The portions are still huge which is great but prices definitely went up.
I asked for a refill for my water and the bus boy went to every table but ours and didn’t refill mine. Servers were very nice. The food was good but I’m upset there wasn’t any ice cream left! One of the reasons we came here was for the free ice cream.

Location moved and the food tastes more or less the same as before. The restaurant is nice– exactly the kind of facelift the old location needed. It’s a bunshik restaurant, so expect the boatload of msg.
I also have a serious suspicion that the macaroni, rice, and potato salad on the side of the donkatsu platters are reused. It’s super dry and packed– easily transferable to the next plate and since most people don’t eat it, it’s a great cost saving scheme for them.
For me, this is like slipping, falling off my diet and having KFC or Taco Bell once a year kind of deal. Korean stoner food?
You’re given pickled daikon/​radish, miso soup, salad and not-​very-​good kimchi upon being seated. Their donkatsu is very popular but today’s was a bit too soggy… Maybe it’s bc we got the kimchi pork katsu? Our favorite dish is the oven cooked cheese seafood spaghetti– maybe that’s still real good but we didn’t get that today. The Jjol myun was good– exactly the same as before.
Service is fine even though the place was packed by 7pm on a Monday. I just question the freshness of the food. The steamed dumplings were good but likely from a Korean supermarket.

I’ve been coming here for 10 years. I’m so happy they moved to a bigger place, lord knows they needed it! I’ve ordered take out as well as eaten here probably at least 100 times. I’m Korean and well nothing will beat the real street cart bunshik in Korea, this place is the best for bunshik in the area. My family’s go to is always donkatsu but I’ve had just about everything on the menu. If it’s your first time get the donkatsu and ask for the sauce ALWAYS on the side. Their fried dumplings are very good as well. Portions are big and servers are always polite. I’m currently sitting here with the itis trying not to fall asleep writing this. LOL!

Don’t ever ORDER take out or delivery from Totowa. I ordered pork cutlet or dongkatsu for take out.
These are my grievances
1. The rice tasted like it it was blow dried then reheated to compensate for its lackluster dryness. Usually, fresh rice gets soggier when kept in a closed container for some time.
2. The macaroni tasted bloated and overcooked as if the cook gave me the leftovers. Most likely because I ordered take out but who knows?
3. The soup and the sauce for the cutlet definitely contained MSG, it tasted way too savory for it be naturally flavored.
4. The mashed potatoes was aight. It left a strange aftertaste.
5. The way they packed my lunch felt like they were in a hurry and didn’t care that I was paying the same amount as those who dined-​in.
–I’m only giving two stars because the pork cutlet tasted like a remnant of what it used to be when totowa first opened.
I think its to better dine-​in at this place because «new» totowa wants to increase their popularity and profit margin. This restaurant does not keep food quality and integrity in mind for a person’s well being but sees everything as a business from the moment a customer walks in and out.
There are many restaurants like this and that is okay but their food quality is NOT consistent especially when they deliver food or when a customer orders take out.
This place has been like comfort food to me and I have eaten from this restaurant many times but they disappointed me a lot with this instance.
Also, I believe and opinionate they are spiking their food with MSG since their grand opening, so they can hook and reel in customers.

I’m so glad that they relocated around the same area! It’s about a block or two away from the previous location so it’s not much of an inconvenience. The new location is much brighter, cleaner, bigger and overall just a lot nicer than the previous location which was pretty run down in my opinion. This is the perfect place to go when you have a group of people who are indecisive about what to eat. There are plenty of dishes to choose from, the portions are large, almost like a family style so I recommend ordering a few dishes and sharing.
I have to say that the food here has always been consistent. There are so many options on the menu but some of my favorites are the cheese kimchi bokembap (fried rice), cheese dontaksu, kimchi jigae and dwenjang jijae. My least favorite dish on the menu would be the seafood spaghetti in white sauce. Some people love it and some hate it, I personally wasn’t too happy with it. Overall, this place will not disappoint you. There’s also free ice cream on the way out and who can say no to that?!

Dine in area is more clean and neater than the previous location but the men’s restroom down stairs were not clean at all. I had (N6) but it wasn’t great at all, I felt like it had too much MSG. Just the proportion size was good but the taste was not good compare to other chinese Korean restaurants. (C27) was good as most other korean restaurants. They only served 3 side dishes plus miso soup for the. By the cashier, they have free self service vanila ice cream.

The food quality is the same as their previous location, but the interior is a much needed upgrade! I remember going to their other location down the street and it felt a bit dingy (which didn’t stop me from going, btw). This new place is modern and clean and I now have no hesitation coming here to eat.
My friends and I had what we usually order, and I’m happy to say that the food has not changed! Their donkatsu and kimchi fried rice with cheese are my favorite things to get here, so make sure to check these out!