Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ — Restaurant in Vancouver

[Be Cautious and recommend you read] I do not usually write negative reviews, and I am usually a peaceful person and not so picky about food, service etc. However, this time, I can not help myself speak up based on my experience in this restaurant. I hope you can read and then make your own decision to go or not.

I have to say the restaurant tried their best to rip you off with basically lower than average service and the manager there is rude and showing attitude of "I do not care about your experience, you just need to pay whatever I tell you"

I am more than outrageous about the attitude they showed up and the experience is completely a disaster/nightmare. Until I recall now, I can not stopped shaking my hands.

We as a team event went there for lunch. We called in to book a table for 8-10 people cause we do not know if someone may not able to join. The lady in the call told us that the gratitude is 18% mandatory with 8-10 people and suggested us to book for 8 people first and can extend to 10 people since it is lunch time. Thus we booked 8 people to begin with.

It end up all team member is able to join the event, so we now have 10 people. They said they can do 10 people since there is basically no customers in the restaurant. When we try to order, they continue suggesting for their holiday set menu which is very expensive with tiny food. I can understand they are eager to sell more, and they recommend for 12 people set menu (note we only have 10 people and not that hungry). We rejected the set menu and the manager seems unhappy. I did not feel anything wrong, cause I think we can order individually.

During the meal, the service quality is average or below average. We have to pull water ourselves, there is no server around until I have to walk over to explicitly ask them to come. I did not think it is a big deal at that moment.

However, when we are ready for the bill, the manager come to us and ask for 20% gratitude. I told the manager that we called and confirmed the gratitude is 18%, there is no reason to mark up by another 2 %. It is not a big change, but I felt I was being lied and they just try to get whatever they can from you.

I can understand that the business is not so good and no one is eating there beside us. But you can not rip people off because of that. Especially, you were telling me 18% gratitude and then when you pay, it becomes 20%. Money is not big difference, but the attitude is making me extremely angry. The manager showed the attitude, like " this is 20%, cause you have 10 people, not 8, so you pay more". Come on, it is your people suggest me to book for 8 to begin with.

The manager is rude and in-professional, we complaint the service they had, but he do not really care, he only cares about whether you can pay him 20% gratitude. Gratitude is something you earn it not something you force people to pay. If a resteraunt doing really good job on service, I am willing to pay more, sometimes even 30%+. But for a resteraunt with service below average, even 18% I feel high.

My personal guess is that the manager would expect us to buy their set menu that they can earn more, while we did not. He probably unhappy about his KPI and try to revenge us to mark up the gratitude.

After we complaint about this situation, the manager is stilling showing an attitude that you must pay this 20% gratitude no matter what service we received. The manager is rude and only cares about we pay nothing else.

This is the first time ever in my lifetime being so so angry about a restaurant. We end up pay $100+ for gratitude with no service at all. The money is not a big deal, but the attitude of the manager is making me and the group outrageous.

This situation can be simply resolved a simple apologies, however the manager do not care about at all how customer feels. I am not really sure for a resteraunt like this, how can they survive. And I am not surprise that at lunch time, there are only 1-2 tables in service.

If the owner of the restaurant around and can see this post,, please spend some...

I had a dinner to organize with a few picky eaters and this proved to be the best place to take them all. Definitely make reservations, though - and over the phone is better than on the website.

The food was very good - nice cuts of meat, very well prepared, presented to us in a friendly and easing manner that gave us confidence we would cook it properly.

This is a steakhouse - it is not for vegetarians it vegans. There is a bit of seafood, poultry, and vegetables, but it is centered around red meat. The cuts are sliced thinly so they cook through quickly. You get many slices in each dish so you can try out a few ways of cooking (laying a slice flat with cook through faster than bunching it up, for example). There are different marinades in different dishes and I was a fan of all I tried.

This was a high energy meal - lots of movement means some calories were burned, and that made us feel more comfortable eating more meat (Note: this is not a statement of a new diet plan). The veggies we added on were plain and simple, and that helped them pair with the meat. I thought a bit of oil would help the veg we grilled, but I put a slice of fatty meat on top to solve that.

The BBQ burner was quite safe; nobody got burns, the grill was changed so there was no smoke or fires and heated up very quickly, and there's an extinguisher built into the table for more safety.

I would say that the tables are best suited for couples. We had three people at ours and that was really using up all the space. Maybe I'd be happier with 2 or 6 people in a party than 4. I think I'll go back with a party of 6 to give it a try - that would be a good night it out!

As it was our first time there it was recommended that we take one of the special platters of popular dishes, which proved to be a very good idea. Two of our group (of 3) are light eaters so we chose a platter for two and added on a couple veggie dishes, some dumplings, and some shrimp, and that was the right amount for the three of us. We probably could have taken some dessert, too, but our time was running out.

That was the biggest hiccup - we were told it was a 2 hour limit to our stay. Ok, it's a busy place, but it is also a more social aspect than most meals. We cooked our food at the table, so we interacted more while eating - and the meal took longer that way, cooking bite by bite. We were not rushed to get out, but we probably could have relaxed and enjoyed it for another half hour or more. And if we had a larger party or a larger platter to share we would have needed more time to finish up.

The two other hiccups with the restaurant: a larger barbecue would be a bonus (it is a good size for a group of 2 but it was running out of space for the three of us), and the meat dishes were hard to identify when on the table.

I want to say that the BBQ was bigger than what I remember at another restaurant I went to (a long time ago) - so it was larger than I expected; but think of it as the size of one large pizza and how many people that would easily feed - you might need two for your group. I'm guessing you get that with bigger groups, I just didn't see.

As for identifying the meat dishes, each was introduced to us with the name and how long the pieces needed to be cooked for - kudos for that - but we were not familiar with the dishes, so the names were immediately lost. The cooking times were remembered because dishes with similar cooking times were placed on the table together - so more kudos for that!

Now, to wind that down, perhaps a note or tag on the dishes would help new visitors remember the names for future identification. And maybe you are thinking that perhaps this is totally a minor point - so that means you can tell that so much of the meal was really good if this is all I'm saying as a hiccup.

And, yes, it really was a good meal. As stated earlier, I'd like to go back with a bigger party, and when reserving I'll ask about having a longer visit because I like to take things slowly. It is a fun night out, cooking in here,...

I have always loved coming here to have great food, eat too much and enjoy the atmosphere. Sadly it's been a few years since I've come to the Vancouver one and it's not the same at all. They have tables on the right side that are electric grills, they are awful! We weren't warned or given a choice, it was only once we ordered the grill was turned on and I realized it was electric. When we inquired about this we were told "oh the other half of the restaurant has the proper grills" I was crushed, we were given a subpar dining experience and a completely different one to what others were experiencing and still being charged the same. When the food came and by this point the grill was heating up for 15 minutes, put my first piece of thinly sliced beef on it and it did not sizzle and didn't even start to cook for at least 5 minutes. I told the waitress and she said oh yes these ones don't get as hot and take longer to cook everything but that means it's more tender. It actually meant everything had to be cooked for 5 to 10 minutes to even get a char, which then meant it was overcooked, then if you didn't overcook it, you were faced with boiled looking meat with chewy fat on it, I ordered duck and in order to get the skin crispy I had to overcook the meat which left it dry and still the fat didn't cook properly. Everything took ages to cook, the sign about the cooking times is completely wrong for these subpar grills. I was very disappointed, why were we put on these tables when the restaurant KNOWS it's a completely different experience and quality. If you get assigned one of these grills, leave it is not the same and waste of your money. Very disappointing birthday experience. It was so bad I was looking for better Japanese BBQ places to take my partner and promised I'd make it up to him. Just based on this experience and being treated differently by being put on these tables and charged the same I...