Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ — Restaurant in Dr. Phillips

Seven weekends of Magical Dining Month. Seven restaurants chosen for amazing menu effort. Too many restaurants phone it in for MDM and offer chicken (boring) or a cedar-plank salmon (yawn). Out of literally hundreds of restaurants, you have to stand out somehow. I ranked all the restaurants, and sought out the best of the best.

Gyu-Kaku is one of my favorite places. I went to the one in Chicago a few years ago, and when I saw them participating in MDM, I had to do the math to see if it's an overall discount compared to other meal deals on their menu. And man, they have a ton of different options. It's overwhelming.

After doing lots of math, and doing some soul searching, we decided that with the overall quality of apps offered, the Magical Dining menu was close enough to a good deal for us to go for it. Sure, the meat wasn't unlimited, but I was ok skipping a night of the meat sweats, so it was a-ok with me.

So we basically four courses here.

Bonus Apps Half Gyu-Kaku Salad, White Rice, Miso Soup, Gyu-Sushi 2 pcs Nice salad, dressing is all on the bottom, so mix it up good. Classic white rice. Classic miso soup. And little pieces of nigiri that had steak on top?? Never had it before. Not complaining, I loved them.

Apps You get to pick one from a decent list. We chose the Japanese Chicken Karaage and the Fried Pork Gyoza Dumplings. Super crispy Japanese fried chicken with a Japanese mayo-like dipping sauce. Super crispy pork dumplings that can be dipped in any of the three tables sauces. Lots of fun, infinitely sharable.

In fact, I shared with some friends I brought along, and got to try the Steamed Chili Dumpling. Soft, steamy dumps with some sweet chili sauce sprinkled on top. Very good.

Main So they break their meats up into two different tiers, a normal tier, and a premium tier. You get to pick two meats from the normal tier, and one from the premium tier. I forgot everything I even ate, because we got six meats, our friends got six meats, and we all tried everything. So I'll just go over highlights.

-If you like filet, don't get the Filet Mignon. This place is a business and the size of the filet you'll get will nothing but disappoint you. -The Spicy Pork is spicy, or so I'm told. I'm Hispanic, so it was fine for me. The people I was with were not-Hispanic, so they were all like, ahh spicy. Do with that what you will. -The Garlic Shoyu Chicken Thigh was lowkey the best item to grill. The other meats are cut so thin, you lose a little bit of their essence, but the thigh was nice and thick, so it took a little more time to cook, but you got a little more substance in your eating it. -Shrimp Garlic, delicious. -The Harami Skirt Steak was the best item, hands down. 20-30 seconds on each side, done, and delicious.

Dessert We finished off with the S'more (classic campfire s'mores. roast the marshmallows over the grill). You get one s'more, one chance, so don't blow it. You gotta get the marshmallow really close to the grill to get any good char on that baby, but once you do the work, it's so worth it. Very fun, especially with a table full of people.

Overall, this was certainly the most fun MDM menu of the season so far. Four friends around a table grill with raw meats is always a recipe for fun. I will probably actually come back before MDM next year, because I forgot just how much fun it is....

We loved this place, whenever we come to Orlando we enjoy the food here. However, today’s experience at GYU-KAKU ORLANDO has been the WORST. We had a nice lunch here yesterday (spent $240 for 4) when we just got off the plane, and we decided to come again for dinner tonight and we’d love to leave a bigger tip for the holiday dinner. We made a reservation via open table and came right on our reserved time. When the duty manager John greeted us with an attitude, we were quite surprised, but I still thought that he might just be having a tough day. He gave us (2 adults, 2 teens) a very tight table shared with another 2 person., while the restaurant was not even 1/3 full at that time. Then we were sitting there for 5 minutes watching a group of servers joking & laughing to each other next to us, not even bothering we were sitting next to them waiting for service. And, the plate was dirty. I had no idea but to ask John for some help, explained to him that we order the holiday special combo yesterday, and we would like a bigger table tonight to order more and the table was not even fit for half we ordered yesterday. John rudely educated me that “ALL table Here Are the Same size, yours is even bigger than others, our bigger tables are saving for bigger group...” We had to call his general manager out who eventually changed the table and the dirty plate. Later we experienced the super salty BBQ items and wrong item sent and the most ridiculous thing was after we sat down at the “bigger table”, John arranged 2 people sat next us with the same sized table, “the bigger one supposed to seat 5 people”—how about his seating rules??? Does it only apply to Asian??? I don’t know if He was doing it on purpose—what a childish way to say that you are rude, you don’t care about your customers and you are racist. What a disappointment! Thank you Gyu-Kaku Orlando for ruining our...

Love love love GK! Every time I come here, I always leave extremely satisfied! There’s just something about cooking your food over an open fire grill. Especially when it’s marinated so well 😗👌🏼 I highly recommend coming here with a group of friends so everyone can have a taste of a variety of things. I came here with a group of 4 and we made reservations so we were able to sit quickly on a Saturday evening. Of course, it was already packed when we got there so highly recommended the reservation route. We all decided to get the cheapest premium AYCE course (which isn’t cheap in a bad way and definitely worth every penny). If someone decides to get order from the premium AYCE menu, everyone at the table has to make the same choice. So after a unanimous decision, we were ready. Game face on. Our server said we were allowed to order 2 dishes a time per person and couldn’t order more until the previous dishes hit the table. Talk about Hunger Games. We began to strategize to get the maximum variety as well as value for our limited time dinner (90m time limit). Let’s just say we were successful and were able to get all the dishes that we wanted at a good time. There were times where the server didn’t come around for some time and we ran out of food on the grill, but it’s certainly not a complaint since we probably needed to chill and let the food set in for a bit anyways instead of constantly stuffing our faces with food which we may have regretted afterwards. I think we had about 10min left on the clock and our server recognized the look of surrender on our faces so she asked us if we were ready for dessert. Since dessert goes to a separate stomach we all had room for the ice cream and s’mores that came with our premium AYCE course and it was definitely the perfect way to end the night. Thanks for a great dinner GK!...