Yakiniku Rikimaru Umeda douyama shop — Restaurant in Osaka

Poor equipment spoils good beef

Had the 90 mins Wagyu buffet with my wife and two small kids and we came out dissatisfied and slightly hungry. I’m honestly confused why this place was rated so high.

Positive: Service is pretty fast. Easy to order and reorder meat with built in tablet at the table.

Negative: the rectangle style grill (see photo) doesn’t get very hot. (Waitress checked it was on maximum).

As a result, food takes forever to cook and you can’t caramelise your meat properly. You spend so much time waiting you actually get full from waiting. No point paying for premium meat if you don’t have decent equipment to cook it on right? This place needs to seriously upgrade their cooking equipment.

Notes: Looking at photos from other stores, some seem to use charcoal grills or other grilling systems. Suggest you check those stores out if you prefer caramelised meat otherwise it feels like you are destroying quality meat with a warm grill. Last order is at 65mins. Each person needs to order a drink...

Cold nihonshu came with ice, which the manager heard me remark at and asked the waitress to get another glass of nihonshu without ice

Lemon highball tasted identical to lemon chuhai. Absolutely no whiskey flavor. But it did come in a different glass.

Red wine was surprisingly good, and served at a pleasant temperature.

White wine was warm :(

Karaage was good and served very hot.

Servers kept putting dishes where the divider would knock into the food as they left. Not acceptable.

Servers were slow at removing plates. One server (maybe she was new) asked if she wanted to take one of the plates that had food on it, when there was a pile of empty plates on the other side of the table.

My impression is that the manager is well intentioned but the staff is under-trained, and possibly incompetent. I wish the best for...

AVOID if you expected better quality meat and Japanese BBQ. Staff is friendly, but the food is average, particularly it is leaning towards more of a Korean style BBQ than Japanese. The meat is mostly thick and quite fat. Environment felt oily as well. I was expecting meat to be slightly better quality and less fatty. I couldn't make an order for a cup of coke in the last 30 minutes despite that I paid for all you can drink. It's quite stingy of them. The 'drink' section wasn't clear on the tablet, so I'd assume that I can make order for drink for the 90 minutes that I paid for, and the 60 mins order restriction is for meat and other food. This should be explained to customers clearly in...