Gyu-kaku Japanese BBQ — Restaurant in Atlanta

TL;DR: Food and atmosphere were good, service not as much. Price for value of certain options are questionable, but this was my first time so I'm willing to give it another chance to earn more stars in the future.

Made a reservation for three, about five days in advance to celebrate my graduation.

Atmosphere: Low light ambiance, tables not crowded together, clean bathrooms, good size tables for small parties (didn't pay attention to the big tables). The nicest thing about this place was the smokeless grills. They have a fan underneath the grill that draws the smoke out and downwards which not only keeps the smoke out of your way from seeing and talking to your friends, but also makes the experience much quieter and relaxing than what I've experienced with the overhead exhaust systems you find at most Korean BBQ spots in town.

How it works: We did the AYCE option last night. There is a 90 minute time limit from the moment they serve you your first meat dish. I forgot exactly how long after you start that they call last call. Anything left over at the end of the meal will be charged a la carte. If you do not like a certain dish, you can send it back before last call and it will not be charged to your bill.

There are three options for AYCE, price per person: Premium($48), Ultimate($58), and Supreme($68) Each option includes all of the items from the cheaper option(s)

Food: ~ Premium Menu ($48) The Miso Soup was a good side portion that helped refresh my stomach between rounds. Flavor was great and vegetables weren't cheap tasting. The New York Steak had good flavor. The Kalbi Chuck Rib was very tender.

~ Ultimate Menu ($58) The Filet Mignon and the Gyu Sushi weren't as tender as I had hoped. The Harami Skirt Steak was pretty tender and had a great marinade. The beef tongue was almost like beef brisket.

~ Supreme menu ($68) The quality of certain premium meats were satisfactory. My favorite was the prime kalbi short rib(limited to one round per person) and the duck breast. I personally think that these are the only two items that make the Supreme option worth it. The Fried Calamari was nice and crispy with a flavorful sauce and a lemon wedge for a little citric taste.

In my opinion, the only difference between the prime short rib from this menu and the chuck rib from the Premium menu is that the prime is much thicker where as the chuck was almost as thin as beef brisket. As far as the flavor and tenderness, they were pretty similar.

Service: We had one main waiter along with two others running food for our table. One of them was average but friendly, one of them seemed as though he would have rather been anywhere else, and our main waiter was very courteous. The manager also made time to visit our table to get our feedback on what was good and what they could improve on.

They will tell you how long to cook each meat on each side. This is not accurate. Especially for the beef tongue. It is sliced very thin and will cook thoroughly in 10-15 seconds on each side. If you follow their instructions on 30-45 seconds on each side, it will burn/overcook. My advice, go with someone who knows how to cook their meat or ask the waiter to cook it for you.

It took a long time for us to get our orders. We were concerned mainly because we had a time limit, but I believe our main waiter was very lax with that rule because of the wait time. It was not that busy at all and he even commented on how it had been pretty slow that evening so I don't know why it took so long to get our orders. When we brought up the wait, he told us that for some reason that he wasn't sure of, the kitchen staff was passing over his tables and serving other tables first. I don't blame him at all for this, but that is not an acceptable answer. I appreciate him for giving us more time to eat given the circumstances, but unfortunately the only difference between going out to eat and cooking at home for me is the service, so it is the most significant part of my reviews and the kitchen staff hurt that. Otherwise I would have given four...

Below par service quality (slow, inexperienced server), meat served frozen and not fresh (color was off). Make a reservation, otherwise be prepared to wait for hours!

We were there on a Saturday night. No reservation could be made with a party larger than 6 (what we were told). We arrived around 5pm and were told the wait time was 2 hours. We sat at the bar to enjoy some drinks and appetizers. The bartender was great, very friendly and chatty. Only minor suggestions would be if a customer orders a soft drink, maybe offer or ask if s/he wants a glass with ice, this was not asked.

The 2 hour wait time is fairly accurate. But throughout our wait time we noticed many tables were available for a lengthy period of time and not being utilized. Wasn’t sure what the reason was why they couldn’t utilize those tables better to have a higher turnover rate. And even the whole back section of the dining area was closed to customers and seemed to be used for employees' break area.

Many people in our group have had prior exceptional dining experiences at other Gyu-kaku locations in other states, but this Gyu-kaku location failed everyone’s expectations big time!

Our server seemed fairly inexperienced; some of the things we ordered took forever to be served and some she just forgot (she didn’t always write things down when we ordered additional items). For example, we asked for a drink to be refilled; she took the glass with her, and never brought that glass back. We ordered a bowl of rice when we placed our initial food order, but that bowl of rice didn’t come until very late in our meal after we had been served and finished the majority of the BBQ items. What’s the point of bringing the bowl of rice to us if we no longer have entrees to eat it with?!

Any additional food/meat we ordered took like 15-20 minutes to be served; I was expecting this would be a ~2 hour meal, but it turned into a 3.5 hour meal and we were there until closing time. We ordered cakes and ice cream for dessert; she didn’t bring spoons to us when delivering the dessert, and normally a server would quickly go back and get them for us, but it was over 10 minutes before she delivered the spoons along with some additional scoops of ice cream that we didn’t order. I had already gone to the kitchen and asked for spoons after a few minutes of waiting and seeing no sign that she would come back; we had ice creams, it started to melt, we couldn’t just sit there and wait. Glad I did it otherwise we would just be drinking milkshakes by the time she returned.

Our server also didn’t welcome us or ask us if it was our first time dining there and didn’t explain all the different sauces they had on the table and how things work there (which servers at most similar restaurants would do). As we order sets of BBQ meals and they come with many different meats (all come individually on their own plate) and side items, the servers didn’t explain what items were being served to us and there was no list on our table to keep track of what was being served and what was not; customers pretty much have no clue what maybe missing or what will still come.

There was no table visit by a manager throughout our meal, until we made a complaint that the beef tongue we ordered was served frozen and the meat was a dark brown color and not a fresh red-ish color. The manager came and said they would remove this item from our check and explained it is always served frozen, but didn’t address why the color was not red but dark brown.

Overall, a very bad dining experience due to poor service and some poor food quality. Would recommend anyone looking for this type of BBQ to go check out other Korean BBQ places and don’t waste your money and time at this Gyu-kaku Japanese...

Myself and my guest were sat at 12:45 to enjoy lunch.

It took roughly 15 minutes for the waitress, who is clearly overburdened with 9 other tables, to get to us.

I have food allergies and texture issues due to being on the spectrum and so typically I remove items that cause me issues.

I ordered 2 appetizers. Chicken katsu and steamed dumplings

For my entree I ordered the lunch ramen no veggies. My guest ate my salad.

Mind you the waitress is not writing anything down, which is a huge red flag.

45 minutes later the food comes out and there is veggies in my ramen. 5 minutes for waitress to come by and notice. She takes it back, my guest and I being in a strict time schedule voice this concern and I mention the appetizers. The waitress confirmed they were being made but in reality she didn’t put the order in.

The ramen comes back and at first glance it looked green onion and veggie free. Until I pulled the noodles up and it was clear the kitchen staff just scooped as many as they could out and then hid the rest under the noodles. Again I send it back decline further intervention to be remade because we will be late. I ask, again about the appetizers.

The steamed dumplings come out but not the chicken Katsu. I question where the chicken is… we waited 25 minutes and I was told as I was signing my bill the katsu was on the bill and would be ready soon. I asked for it to go. We waited 15 more minutes and had to leave as not to be late for work.

Require your wait staff to write orders down. Kitchen staff that doesn’t take removal of items seriously is a huge red flag especially to someone with food allergies. The bathroom area walls are filthy and marked to hell.

A quick lunch turned into an ordeal that lasted over 1.5 hours. Won’t...