Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ — Restaurant in Honolulu

My wife and I showed up a half hour before our reservation and they were very accommodating and had our table ready within minutes. I had a blue Hawaiian and my wife had a lava flow to drink. They were both really good, but the lava flow was slightly better. We thought the concept of cooking our food at our table would be fun and a great experience. Our first course came out about 5 minutes apart, and then her soup came out with the entrees. Our grill looked gross and the flame was all focused on one small spot. After about 10 minutes, the flame went out, and it took me several minutes to find our server. I waived him down, and he gave me the "1 second" finger, and he proceeded to clear a vacant table before making time to see what the issue was. When I explained to him the flame went out, he said "that can happen when you try adjusting it yourself".. I proceeded to tell him that wasn't the case. Instead of offering to replace the semi cooked food that had now been sitting half cooked on the grill, or offering to move us to a different table, he just shoved a piece of folded up paper into the igniter and has the flame too low to cook our food. So we had the rest of our meal with a steady clicking noise from the igniter. It's tough to say, but I feel if we had a different table and server, the experience could have been...

During our family trip to Waikiki, this BBQ restaurant gave us the worst experience of all. We had a confirmed reservation and arrived five minutes early. Shockingly, the front desk woman, with a visibly annoyed attitude, told us to wait outside for five minutes—despite the restaurant having plenty of empty tables inside.

To our disbelief, three walk-in customers without a reservation were seated right away, while we were left outside near two homeless people, ignored and uncomfortable. No one came to check on us or offer any explanation. After waiting more than five minutes, I went back inside to ask what was going on, and the same woman coldly said they were “preparing the table and water.” That excuse was clearly just a cover for something else.

It felt like we were being deliberately mistreated, and honestly, the way we were treated came off as racially discriminatory. We were polite the entire time, yet treated as if we were unwelcome. In the end, we left and dined elsewhere.

I seriously question the high ratings this place has on Google. No one deserves to be treated this way—especially not in a tourist-friendly place like Waikiki. Avoid this restaurant at all costs if you value...

DO NOT COME HERE YOU WILL WASTE MONEY! I came on 2 hours before closing and we had about 4/5 different servers asking us what we wanted and they kept forgetting what we ordered, so we BARELY got to eat anything and we spent $56 a person.

This restaurant is a joke. The food is good, but it really annoyed me that they want all this money for dinner service, but did not bring out all the meat we asked for. What is the point in it costing so much? If I wasn't feeling so nice, I would've made a big deal out of it right then in the restaurant, but I'm just going to write a review to warn others. DO NOT play with people’s money because one day, someone might make a scene if they’re spending $50 per person and the waitstaff is more focused on cleaning up and looking “busy” than doing their jobs.

Time limit is 70 minutes, but we waited about 15-20 minutes between meats and they only give you max 4 pieces of the small cuts of meat, and I just had to wait while they ran around doing nothing basically, but hey at least they were ready for closing and could go straight home once we had an unsatisfactory meal. Tip should’ve been $0 but I wanted to be nice a bit. Never coming back here again....