Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ — Restaurant in Denver

Japanese Barbecue, I had not really thought of that food genre until I very innocently decided to have a meal at Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ in Denver. Why not, you ask? Well, I don't really think of Japanese barbecue considering there',s so much American barbecue around. But my first impression with this wonderful genre was quite good. We arrived about 10 minutes early to make sure that we met our reservation time. After 5ish minutes of wait in the foyer we got our table. I noticed immediately that there was a little grill built into the table. Ooooo, so we cook to our own liking, nice!!!! The seating host seemed a little stern, not angry mind you, but like he was stressed and then I realized, "hey, it's Thanksgiving, this guy probably doesn't want to work and it's probably a hectic day already". Fair enough I wanted to give this place every benefit of the doubt I could, go easy on the guy when he has to work on a holiday. After perusing the menu a little I found that it was quite the meatatarian delight, if you're vegan/vegetarian you have some option but lets be clear, their main food here is MEAT!!! And lot's of it. At least 10 different cuts of beef, chicken, pork and some really lovely appetizers including octopus takoyaki which my daughter absolutely loves (definitely not my thing). There were all kinds of choices as to the amounts of food you could choose, mixtures of several different types of beef starting at $32.00 per person and going all the way up to over one hundred dollars per person. Of course they had the most amazing Japanese beef on the menu, the wagu beef, we chose a slightly less modest beef and it was delicious. There was a whole page of appetizers of all types from potstickers to sushi and it was all quite lovely to look at with pictures and great descriptions of the food. If you're not up on Japanse cuisine this was a HUGE help in deciding what you might want to eat. Our server was very pleasant and helpful young lady especially since we'd not experienced this type of dining before, she explained the menu, she got our grill hot and ready to cook and she was smiling and cheerful the whole time, what a great addition to our meal to have a server that obviously liked what she was doing. We ordered our food and it was only about 5ish minutes before things started arriving. We had a miso soup, which I'm not normally thrilled with but it was tasty and got the meal started. Almost perfectly to the minute when I finished my soup the meats and prepped sides started arriving. We had this lovely deep fried and battered chicken appetizer with an amazing sauce of what was obviously mustard, wasabi, mayo and possibly sour cream, it was delightful delicious and balanced well. The presentations overall of the whole meal was good, and just what you'd expect from a good restaurant. Each meat had been marinated in a different sauce and we plopped them on the grill in front of us. They even have a chart as to how long to cook everything depending upon if you like rare, medium, or well done. At least 7 plates of different meats showed up and each were of great quality. As we ate they brought us an interesting "sushi", on a rice pile, of roast beef and it was tender and delicious. The table housed 3 different types of soy, a tangy lemonish style, a sweet style, and a hot style that had a lovely ginger kick to it. They all added a large dimension of flavour to the food. It was all so good and at the end we were given a smore, yes that's correct, a smore, which we grilled on the flames and ate with satisfaction. I had a house saki which was hot. The menu housed some more fancy saki's that are cold but I was very sastified with the hot and it paired with the meal in an excellent way. For a chain restaurant it's in the top 10 that I've ever tried. Excellent food, lovely service, our final bill with tip was about $135.00 and for this meal, well worth it. Why 4 stars? It was great, it wasn't outstanding or the best I've had in a chain restaurant. Definitely...

The worst customer service I’ve ever experienced in a restaurant! One of the hosts was so rude and had a bad attitude. She seriously shouldn’t be in the service industry.

We came into the restaurant on Wednesday 25th Jan at 9PM seeing that on Google it says the restaurant closes at 9.30PM. The host refused to seat us and gave us many lies.

She said there are no table available as there will be other parties coming after us

I asked her when is last call, she said 9.15pm. I assured her that we could order by 9.15pm and be out quick. She said “You can’t order in 10 mins”. What? Why can’t I order in 10 mins? If last call is at 9.15pm I should be able to order until 9.15pm.

We talked to her for a while and another excuse she gave was that they were so busy and it’s the end of the night so they ran out of most items.

At the end she finally said that the servers are not taking anymore table. What??

So after not being able to sit down we ordered a pick up from UberEats instead. We waited from 9.15pm-10pm and no other people came in after us so basically the first excuse was a lie!

After we got our pick up orders we opened our bags in the restaurant to find that we’re all missing Miso soups. We went up to her and asked for that and she said “The tofu is frozen, we have to cut it so no miso soup”. WHAT!?! What kind of ridiculous excuse is that?! I mean it’s their job to complete the order that customers paid for. We were shocked but we were too tired to fight with her so we just left.

After I got home I opened my food and it’s missing 4 shrimp that I ordered. So that’s another bummer.

This experience was the worst customer service I have ever experienced. I would not recommend this...

I intend to try this place again for the barbecue, because I expect that’s their strong suit. It wasn’t that I disliked this place but it didn’t wow, and I suspect it has more to do with inexperienced staff. However, they were all friendly and seemed like they were happy to be there, and that means something in this day and age. My fiancé and I came in on a Friday evening with a earlier reservation; the restaurant was less than half full, we checked in with the host, and then waited for almost 15 minutes while it seemed like the staff were clearing up a big pile of side work on the table they told us we would be seated at. Again, the restaurant had lots of open tables, but I thought maybe they had a specific reason they were doing that. Anyway, we sat and ordered some small plates because we had a craving for takoyaki — it’s the reason we came. We also ordered (cold) spicy cucumber salad, black pepper wings, spicy jalapeño edamame, and fried bacon chips. Was everything tasty? Yes, but it seemed like each hot dish had been cooked and then forgotten for several minutes before coming to the table. (Being served just-warm takoyaki is a bit disappointing, in my opinion it should be piping hot.) The bacon chips, which we ordered later, were the only thing that arrived at the table at a hot temperature. On the other hand, the servers were attentive and the drinks were delicious. Also, it seems they were responsive to the state of the restrooms. My fiancé said that the floor had been littered with toilet paper, but when I went a few minutes later it had been freshly cleaned. Again, we fully intend to return to try the barbecue, since that seems to be...