The Background

SteelCraft locations are unique communal dining spaces with three locations in Southern California. They include craft foods and drinks and wide open areas with large tables and benches. The distinct feature with all SteelCraft locations is that the restaurants are built within old modified shipping containers.

The Garden Grove location is really cool looking. It’s a very distinct looking center due to the shipping containers. I can’t say I’ve seen anything quite like it. I love how wide open the communcal area is and how the restaurants are all on the outside of this area surrounding it. They certainly did build this with a sense of community and togetherness with having everyone eating in the same area.

The Food

Barrio

One of the restaurants that peaked my intererst at the Garden Grove SteelCraft was Barrio. A fusion of Filipino and Korean BBQ. That’s not a fusion I’ve ever seen before and the menu sounded pretty solid. It was time to give it a try!

SteelCraft Barrio has a lot of different skewers to choose from (pork, chicken, shrimp, tofu) as well as other proteins like pork / beef bulgogi, salmon, and liempo. You can mix and match the skewers so I decided to go with the pork and chicken. I had wanted the rice but they were out for the night so I got it with the mixed green salad and also got the kimchi. It’s a fair amount of food for $10.50

The salad has a few toppings on it but is pretty much a garden salad. There is a generous amount of spring mix here and it’s a lot of salad. I thought there could be a bit more dressing provided. It was a bit dry and certainly could have used more dressing. I also didn’t feel that there was very much kimchi as a side. It was pretty solid kimchi, just could have used some more of it.

The skewers are well marinated and well coated. There’s a good char on them and they taste great mainly due to the sweet and tangy marinade and sauce. The meat itself was pretty over cooked and tough, which was disappointing.

A piece of pork

The Verdict

For the amount of money for the meal ($10.50) it’s a good amount of food. The proportions, especially the salad, is a lot. The quality is good as well. The marinade and the sauce is really tasty and is a highlight to me. It would have gone really well with rice for sures.

The few things that were a negative to me were the lack of salad dressing, small side of kimchi, and overcooked meat.

Again, it’s tough to find a meal like this for only $10.50 in this day and age and it’s certainly worth the price despite the “negatives” I list. There just needs to be a few tweaks and I feel like Barrio would be pretty legit.