Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ — Restaurant in Cambridge

For context, we visited twice across a 6-week time period. Also, I have been to this chain in Japan where the service is impeccable and the food is out of this world.

The first time we went I would have called it, 'ok'. Food was good, service ok, the back area where the chefs were at wasn't the cleanest, but I assumed it was just an anomaly. It was enough of an experience that we chose to return with guests.

We wish we hadn't. It's probably the most miserable 90 minutes I've ever spent in a restaurant. The temperature of the restaurant was absolutely freezing. I'm not kidding freezing. We actually kept our winter coats on the whole time and when we got home everybody had to run and take showers because we were so desperately cold.

We were sat at a table for 6 people and it only had one grill. The grill only half worked and barely could cook our meat. Seated on the outside edge meant that you didn't touch the grill at all. Seating on the inside meant that you were constantly at the grill cooking everybody's food.

The only time after our initial order that we saw our server was when they were dropping off food. And when they did that they did it so quickly that not only could you not ask for anything, like I don't know a refill on water, they didn't take a single plate off our table. So we just got more and more and more stacked and disgusting trying to reach over raw plates to reach our grill. Note, we were one of the first tables of the evening so they absolutely were not busy. At what point I even got up to walk around to see if I could find her a server and they were completely missing in action. My guess is that they were hiding in a back room.

What I did get to see when I was looking around was that the kitchen was still completely disgusting. They were dirty rags all over the floor as well as food. The actual chefs looked like they knew what they were doing, but nobody else did.

When we are finally done, We got our friendly reminder about why nobody cared that we were getting atrocious service and that came in the form of an auto gratuity on our bill (We were aware of this beforehand but honestly had completely forgotten it during the miserableness of our dinner).

As you can see from other recent reviews, whatever has happened to what used to be a decent restaurant is incredibly concerning.

There are enough good restaurants in Cambridge....

On 6/26/2020 I made a reservation for 4 people at 730pm at the Cambridge location. My group and I arrived early and were seated right away which was pretty good. As we waited we were not offered water, or any utensils for a little while; approximately 10 minutes. Once the waiter/server came he did not introduce himself, was not polite; and seemed like he did not want to service my group. We ordered multiple items including 3 separate orders of rice, in which the waiter proceeded to say “I think you’ve ordered enough for now. And 1 rice is enough for 2 people” the portions of rice are extremely small, so we wanted to order sufficient food so everyone can be satisfied. I find it disrespectful that a waiter would tell anyone that they’ve ordered enough!!! When people go to restaurants it is to spend money and eat whatever they’d like! As we ate the waiter would come back every 10-15 minutes to ask if we needed anything. That is too long to check on a table of 4 with an open FIRE GRILL in front of us. This waiter did not once offer us water we had to ask for more, we had to ask him to clean the table multiple times. LASTLY in the beginning I had asked this server for a sangria cocktail. He stated that they did not have ANY alcoholic beverages except beer such as bud light. 20 minutes after I had asked for a sangria a Caucasian group of 2 walked in and sat across from us, the woman asked for a sangria and the SAME WAITER brought it to her with NO issue!!! I then asked him why he told me there wasn’t any sangria and he proceeded to say “there is only FROZEN SANGRIA.” When he knew that is exactly what I wanted. I don’t mean to make this a race thing! But I have NEVER ever experienced such horrible service and discrimination the way I did on 06/27/2020. I have gone to many many restaurants and I am a GREAT TIPPER and I always pay every bill. This was just NASTY! I’d never return there again!...

Food was great. We usually go to the Brookline location but they had no spots available. Started with walking in and no one was at the host stand had to wait 5 minutes not to bad. We sat down and I asked for lemons for the water and ordered a couple things to start. Throughout the rest of our evening the server did not ask us how anything was, ask us for a drink order/water refills, and wasn’t even attentive. Mind you we planned on ordering a lot from the menu but still hadn’t seen our server in 10min or more to order more food after our plates had been empty for a while. Every other server around us was very attentive to their tables and checked in on them at least 3 times in the time we waited to even see our waitress who didn’t come up to our table we had to basically flag her down. After dealing with the awful server we finally spoke to a manager who was extremely professional and kind. Took care of some our bill. (Which we didn’t ask for… it wasn’t a money thing it was about the awful service) Even after speaking to the manager our server still never came back!!!! As a server I get it if your busy but it was not busy not once were we checked in on.. and I didn’t want to say anything to management but it got to a point where we didn’t even want to order more bc it would have taken forever. The server doesn’t even have to run their own food or bus their table which makes it even worse. Sad we got a bad server at one of our favorite restaurants that’s over an hour away. Rest of servers were awesome by the sight of it. They actually took care of...