A sweaty-looking man ambled out from the kitchen gripping a massive pair of iron tongs holding a bucket of red hot coals, which he then placed in a hole in the centre of one of the tables. He walked back to the kitchen swinging his tongs like a Shanghai iron worker. What the. . . ? Each table had a stainless steel-lidded hole in the centre. I guessed it might be some sort of Korean indoor DIY barbecue.

We took a table near the end of the long dining room and eyed the menu. I immediately spied one of my favourite Chinese starters: a dish that either sends diners into fits of laughter or makes them recoil . . . jellyfish salad.

The restaurant was eerily quiet . . . no music and the other diners seemed to be too busy poking at their barbies to bother with conversation. On the far wall, an enormous flatscreen television was tuned to GCNTV: Global Christian Network TV, a surreal mix of English-language teaching programmes by Americans with dazzling teeth saying things like "Repeat after me: Salvation! Through Christ I am Saved!" and clips of the televangelist Jerry Falwell proselytising from his pulpit. In 1965, Reverend Falwell gave a sermon criticising Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, which he sometimes referred to as the civil wrongs movement.

Lovely chap.

A waitress approached and asked us if we were ready to order. "I'll start with the jellyfish salad." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "You want, jerryfish, sarad?" "Yes please." "Okay. . ." and then she gave me the 'It's your funeral kiddo' look. She, our waitress, was stupefyingly beautiful, so all I could do was smile wanly, her cute accent making me all the more putty-like.

As it happens, I've had 'jerryfish sarad' a few times before and I've really liked it. Your gills may turn a greener shade of spinach at the thoughts of it sliding into your kisser accompanied by shredded cabbage and carrot in a (spicy) hot sauce, but the sensation of slippery with crunchy gives one awesome 'mouth feel'. In Chinese and much Asian cuisine, there are two . . . seldom contemplated by most western chefs . . . elements a cook may consider when preparing a dish: 'mouth taste' and 'mouth feel'. Jellyfish falls into the 'mouth feel' category. This dish is actually fantastic, and simply requires a mindover-matter-style leap of faith to stop thinking about what you are actually eating and allowing your mouth to simply enjoy the fabulous textural melange. I wish some of our native chefs were as adventurous in their choice of ingredients. I'm sure Kevin Thornton or Richard Corrigan could do wonderful things with a jellyfish.

My two barbecue buddies went for the seafood pancake, which was more of an omelette but very tasty nonetheless, and crispy wontons, which were a bit tasteless.

Soon it was barbecue time. We ordered the 'BBQ for 3' and the sweaty chap with the tongs came out again and slotted a bucket of glowing embers into our barbie hole. Our waitress came out with plates of raw chicken, beef, pork, king prawns in their shells, squid, potato slices and lettuce.

Our Korean barbecue masterclass was about to begin. The waitress placed a few pieces of chicken and beef on the hot plate, told us to put the cooked meat on the lettuce with some sauce and then she walked off.

Hmmm, we didn't quite know where to start. It felt as if we were on a bizarre camping trip with Jerry Falwell, a hot Chinese waitress and a sweaty man with a bucket of embers. I pinched myself; it was all actually happening. Salvador Dali was probably doing the hokey-cokey in his grave.

The food was really well cooked. . . Hold on a minute; I was doing the bloody cooking, so they get no kudos for that. It was actually quite relaxing watching things cook. The king prawns were little chubby morsels, the pork was juicy but the beef was a bit tough.

There could have been more dips. The satay one was reasonable enough though.

The potato . . . Lord knows what the potato was doing there . . . that was put on the hot plate just became dried up or burned. Maybe it was there to appease the Irish, who knows. Or maybe we were just bad cooks.

The experience went on for a long time and eventually we got a little tired of the gimmick.

I couldn't decide whether or not I loathed this place or loved it; it all seemed so surreal, but I did have an urge to return two days later, so I did.

Maybe it was the waitress's beauty that drew me back or maybe it was because I really liked the food. It might even have been Jerry Falwell sending me out subliminal messages through the screen.

All I know is that I ordered the seafood pancake and again it was excellent. Oh, and I had a strange urge to touch the screen.

All in all, a different . . . very, very different . . . restaurant experience, but one definitely worth seeing to believe.

THE BILL
1 Crispy Wonton 4.50
1 Jellyfish Salad 6.50
1 Seafood Pancake 6.00
1 BBQ for 3 58.00
4 Heineken 18.00
2 Coke 3.60
TOTAL 96.60