Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ

Reviews 3

JA

Jason Karuza

Summary: All you can eat for $30 is a pretty good deal given the quality and quantity of the food. Tastes and textures were pretty good. Service was rapid in bringing out food and laying out "the fine print" (the latter being a bad thing). Wouldnt recommend coming with a large party unless you have a system for managing the grill already in place. Grills need to be changed out more often. My family and my sisters fiances family merged for a 13-person dinner on a Sunday at 5:30pm for her birthday dinner. We arrived around 5:20pm, but ended up waiting until 5:45pm for the tables to be ready (even though they were in the back room, where no one was currently sitting). Not ideal timing since there was a young child in the group that was ready for his din din. We were given two booths for all of us. Which meant one booth had 3 and 3, and the other had 4 and 3. Not spacious really, and each table had one grill, so that meant a lot of hands going to the grill and not a lot of table space since there were plates, sauce trays, glasses, etc. already there. Far from logistically ideal. We were given some menus and told that the happy hour all you can eat price is $30/person. It was encouraged that that be selected, so everyone agreed to go that route for simplicity. We were then told to look over the menu and decide the stuff we wanted. After reviewing, we had an idea, but then the server told us she would just bring two orders of each meat so we could get a taste of everything. Heres where things got kind of sketchy. She basically selected the food for us, minus some of the appetizers we asked for, but after telling us shed bring out two of everything (many of the dishes we would not have ordered normally), she then said wed have 90 minutes to eat everything and anything left wed be charged at the "a la carte" price for. Itd be one thing for us to get charged for extra food we didnt eat if we specifically ordered it, but to be told that AFTER being told what shed bring for us anyways, was just wrong IMO. This left a stain in our heads throughout the meal that we would have to finish everything or pay extra. Whether it was true or not, I cant say, but just having that constantly in the foreground throughout a celebratory dinner is far from an ideal experience. The food started coming out. Plate after plate after plate. As wed start to put stuff on the grill, more food would arrive. Wed have to shuffle things around to make space, and then our food would get charred on one side. Wed try to get those things off the grill and more food would arrive. Wed play the shuffling game again, and our food that had been removed wouldnt be hot anymore. The pacing was just not working for a large group that didnt have a system for how to manage all the items while ensuring everyone got fed. They changed the grill once, but then we had to ask for it to be changed a second time once it was loaded with burnt food that we couldnt remove in time. I tend to be able to eat a lot of food, but I felt like I didnt eat nearly as much as I normally would because I was in the middle on one side and trying to make sure everyone got food and that the stuff on the grill didnt overcook. I ordered one plate extra for myself, but I didnt want to do more since everyone was finishing up and it would look strange for me to be the only one still eating a bunch. Ultimately, it was a decent first Japanese BBQ experience, and I appreciate the potential of Gyu Kaku, but I felt like the restaurant either couldnt handle us properly, or the servers didnt pace things right for us to have a more relaxed dining experience. Either way, Im not sure if Ill come back. If I do, it definitely wont be with a party bigger than four people.

MA

Matt Ezell

Gyu-Kaku serves excellent food if you can stand the wait. Here is where I am coming from. I have visited Gyu-Kaku in Japan. I loved it. The food and service there was exquisite and the price was quite reasonable. I want to like or even love you, Gyu-Kaku HB, but youre not making it easy for me at all. In the last month, I have visited Gyu-Kaku on Warner twice: once on a weekend, once on a weekday, both during lunchtime. Todays lunch was typical of both visits. Which is to say the food was great, but I was very frustrated by the inexplicable waiting. - Today, I was a party of 2. We were told it would be a 5 to 10 minute wait. After a few minutes (I didnt check my watch but it felt like more than 5 minutes), I asked the hostess if it would be much longer since we were on our lunch break. She told me it had only been 8 minutes, so 2 more minutes. That response perplexed me, but it gets better (read: worse). She disappeared briefly (I assumed to check on table availability) and returned and immediately and sat us. - Since we had had several minutes to review the menu while waiting for a table, we promptly ordered our food as soon as our waiter came to help us. - Right after we ordered, I went to wash my hands. On my way back, I noticed four(!) tables for two neatly arranged with all their trimmings such as chopsticks, sauce dishes, etc. Why were we asked to wait at all when there were these 4 open tables in addition to where we ultimately were seated? (Just to be clear, Im not talking about the two open tables for four in the semi-private room at the back of the restaurant. I would completely understand if they were trying to save those for a party of 3 or more.) - Im going to guess that we waited around 15 minutes (maybe as little as 10, maybe as much as 20) before our food was brought out. That would be very reasonable for any restaurant where *they* cook your food for you. But this is Gyu-Kaku, where you have your own private grill built into your table. So Mr. or Mrs. Manager of Gyu-Kaku HB, please explain to me why it takes approximately 15 minutes to bring out sliced and/or marinated raw meat? If I thought the food was ho-hum, I would simply never visit again. But it is precisely due to the reason that I like your food very much that I am so frustrated with your restaurant. Kojis Shabu-Shabu (another Japanese restaurant where you cook your own food at your table) in what used to be called the Block at Orange has now permanently closed and I suspect it is for the same reason. It simply should not take more than 2 or 3 minutes to deliver raw food from the kitchen fridge/freezer to someones table.

JE

Jenny Chan

My house is near by the restaurant so I always walk to the restaurant to have lunch before I go to the LA fitness gym. Everytime I came to the restaurant I hate it , The girl who stand at the reservation she always looked at me like she just see an Alien, no greeting , so mean, I look at her face I was scare, I always come by myself maybe that makes her unhappy or something I dont know. I asked another very nice waitress she told me the mean receptionist name Mantherine. I dont think im going back there, If you are this restaurant manager and read this review I just want to let you know, Im an business owner and I feel customer service in America is the most important, No matter how good of your restaurant and you hide someone who stand at the door and try to kick customers out. I dont think customer want to come back No matter what color of the customers skin. white ,black, yellow , they come to your restaurant to enjoy the food and everyone must to be equal. Because No one walk in the restaurant to eat your foods for FREE so please tell with your worker need to be nice and kind of customers. Im going there alone it doesnt mean I will not prefer a group of my friend to go to have dinner with me, but from my bad experience I will never come back unless that mean girl werent there to stare at me and look like she just wants to beat me up.