Gyu-Kaku (UE Square)

For the full review with pictures, please click on http://thehungrybunnie.blogspot.com/2011/10/gyu-kaku-japanese-bbq-restaurant-ue.html

Gyu-Kaku is one of 2 main Japanese BBQ chains here (the other being Aburiya)

We had:

1) Horenso Salad ($9.90) - must-try here, a Japanese styled spinach salad topped with crisp garlic slices, bacon dressed in savoury creamy sesame

2) Assorted Bacon & Sausage ($15.90) - a diner favourite, especially the pepper-crusted bacon

3) Yakionigiri ($6.90) - plain rice cakes to supplement the meat-heavy meal. This was quite good lightly toasted on the grill

4) Chicken, seasoned in Tare ($10.90) - juicy and good flavour

5) Karubi, seasoned simply in Tare ($20.90 for large) - no need for wagyu beef here, coz the normal cuts are super marbled anyway, these were tender, fairly fatty and moist

For more pictures and reviews, visit ms-skinnyfat.blogspot.com

When it comes to BBQ meat, i like mine in a nice restaurant with attentive service, great meats, wide variety and without smoke. That's the only way to have BBQ really. Do not expect me to be standing in front of a grill, getting all dirty and greasy. Fun yes, but the cleaning up is not joke. I would do that if i am 16 once again but not at this age. Comfort creatures we are as we grow older.

My favorite place to go? Gyu Kaku. I've been there at least 4-5 times and it has never disappointed me (other than the time L and i ordered the ala carte dishes- absolutely unsatisfying). My advice, always go for the sets. Just look at the following pictures and you'd be convinced.



I've tried both the Warai Set and the Fuku set. Not much difference, depending on what you feel like having more. Could always exchange the items for something else if you don't feel like having a particular cut. I love the wagyu short rib! Great marbling and very tender (provided you don't overcook them). 

Perhaps the only healthy dish in the mix. I always go for the Horenso salad which is a creamy sesame dressing with bacon and fried garlic with spinach. This also happens to be the best seller too.

L and i had some grilled miso salmon which ioo is the nicest fish dish ever. It is now replaced by gindara in the Fuku set but it's not too bad. You can never go wrong with fresh and succulent grilled seafood.



Their bimbimbap is also one of my favorites. I would go to Gyu Kaku just for the bimbimbap. Of course i'd be lying if i said i wouldn't be ordering anything else. 

Ok it's kinda fattening to have this on a regular basis. Not the most healthy meal you can have. Just look at the oil on the plate. Tsk. I just had this again yesterday despite my sore throat and cough (sacrifices i make for friends) but you can only live once so it might as well be good right?

On to the desserts, i love the Gyu Kaku ice cream which has soy bean powder and a gula melaka kinda syrup on real vanilla ice cream (with vanilla beans!). This has to be my favorite until i tried the Gyu Kaku Milk pudding.

This is the bomb really. Really soft custardy milk pudding which quivers as you try to scoop it up. Same dressings as the Gyu Kaku ice cream just that this is a milky heaven curd. My new favorite. 

I've been to both the UE and Chijmes outlets and i prefer the UE one even though it's a little out of the way. Bigger space, quieter and not quite smoky too.

Have been a few times for the Japanese BBQ which is very pleasureable and a good interactive food experience. The set lunch menu is great value with several choices on offer at $14++. I tried the gyu don and the beef is excellent. Also great to buy some additional a la carte meats for the BBQ. The dipping sauces for the meat are nicely flavoured. the restaurant has rather dark decor but if you don't mind that the ambience is quite good, and the ventilation seems effective to clear any smoke. Overall a positive experience I can recommend!

For the full review and pictures please visit..

www.houseofstef.com 

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Gyu-kaku's concept of dining is giving the guest the fun experience of cooking your own food.  It's a nice place to bring your friends to have dinner and a couple of beers.  The table is long yet cozy and the charcoal grill is just in the middle of the table so everyone can cook. 

Moving on to the menu, the choices of meat is extensive and the quality is superb. Skip endless browsing of the menu and go straight to the favorites.  I recommend the beef tongue and the beef wagyu. 

Its been awhile since we visited this restaurant. Hence, when we had some visitors from overseas, we jumped at the chance to bring them here because we knew that the food will not fail.

We ordered the Warai set (came with 3 different cuts of wagyu beef and 2 types of black pork cuts, cod fish, mushrooms and desserts). The server told us that it is recommended cause the sets were about 20% cheaper than ala carte. Food is always plenty from our experiences here. So, we ended up ordering the set for 3 persons instead of 4.

Service was decent and the staffs were attentive. They even helped us with the cooking of the fish and mushrooms.

Desserts! Must tries: Milk pudding and Gyu-kaku ice-cream..if you are a fan of the soy powder. Other flavors of ice-cream includes the yuzu, matcha and the black sesame...which you can also find in other Japanese restaurants.

Overall, it would definitely be one of my favorite picks to bring guests for a meal. Only complaint is that...prices can be quite steep :(

 

1st time here but was pleasantly surprised, except with the woman on the phone taking reservation! She sounded rather blunt on the phone. Anyhow, it didn't matter.

We had a few beers, the kimchi combination starter, lettuce leaves, the stone rice, salad, a few plates of wagyu beef cubes, cod fish...all pretty good food. We wrapped it up with yuzu sorbet and it was wonderful. 

I suppose if we were to keep in character, the restaurant itself would be doing the review, seeing as the customers do the actual cooking.

In such case I can only comment on the setting, service and crucially, the quality of the raw (very raw!) ingredients.

We've recently been in Japan and experienced first hand the quality of ingredients there and I am happy to report that the Wagyu here was as good - albeit more expensive! - than in Japan.  We went for the a la carte as the set menus all had a bit too much of the bits I tend to throw away: tongues, jowls and what not, and opted for the ribeye and the sirloin.  To mix up the beefyness of it all we also ordered some lamb chops in a garlic marinade and a small order of chicken breast in the tare marinade.  Good beef shouldn't need much adding and so just rock salt was the preferred choice.  Some green stuff seemed appropriate and asparagus in foil and a salad proved adequate.

I was very happy to see Asahi at $6.90 a mug and immediately availed myself of a few on the grounds it was thirsty work this BBQing lark.  Especially once the charcoal burner arrived.

We'd opted to sit outside to help keep the smokiness down a bit and it seemed to work.

The raw stuff arrived and we set to.  Clearly the Wagyu wasn't going to take too long to cook and it didn't, and even less time time to eat.  Great quality, very tender, very rich.  I got a small flask of cold sake to help the food go down, interspersed with more Asahi and the service was well on the ball with my frantic guzzling, top effort.  The side orders of the lamb chops were superb as well, and perhaps another time when not feeling so expansive just a handful of those would do the job.

We were stuffed by the time the food was finished, with no room for a dessert, but regular readers will be relieved to know I had enough space for a final happy hour Asahi.

Once Mrs R has absorbed all the cholesterol, we shall return...

This was my 1st time at this branch as I usually hit the one at Chijmes. I was pleasantly surprised at the decor & especially liked the sake/wine tower.

Menus were presented to us as we were ushered to our booth & the very friendly waitress asked if she could take our drink orders. I then asked her which sake she would recommend & she took the trouble to ask someone with better knowledge for recommendations.

After we settled on one, we proceeded to order the Sakura set for 2 which costs $168. The sake arrived shortly after & I was relieved to find that it was very pleasant & smooth, which made for a good start to the meal.

However, when the food arrived, I noticed some discrepancies in the items on our table so I flipped the menu open again & realised that the waitress had got our order wrong & given us the cheaper set ($138) instead. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we weren't very hungry to begin with & mid-way through the meal, we began to struggle with the food.

It was a pity we weren't any hungrier than we were as the food was excellent. Save for the sausage platter which we found too salty, the rest of the meat items were very well marinated & scored highly in the taste department. The 2 wagyu cuts were melt-in-the-mouth, the gyutan amazingly springy, the pork tender & the lamb chops thoughtfully wrapped up with foil on the ends to make it easier to eat. The garlic prawns were also wrapped in foil like a parcel & was a cinch to cook. The prawns, apart from the wagyu, was one of the better items on the set as the garlic marinade did not mask the natural sweetness of the prawns & I loved the bite that they had when I sank my teeth into them.

Of course, the set didn't just comprise of meat as it came with some Korean sides like kimchi & a choice of salad. The waitress strongly recommended the spinach salad with sesame dressing & I must say it was a refreshing distraction from the heavily meat-accented meal. The starch component was filled with a serving of bibimbap which I felt tasted even better than those I've had at some of the supposedly authentic Korean restaurants I've been to. It was that good! It was with deep regret that I left my rice unfinished.

Rounding off the meal was a choice of desserts. My bf had the matcha ice-cream & I opted for something lighter in the form of yuzu sorbet. I hadn't expected much but when I tasted my 1st spoonful, I was taken aback by the wonderful burst of citrusy yuzu on my tongue. It had bits of yuzu in it too! The matcha ice-cream was also a very nice way to end the meal as it had a really rich matcha taste & went along fabulously with the red beans drizzled over it. It's difficult to pick the winner & I will probably end up ordering both the next time I dine at Gyu Kaku.

Not sure actually...kind of like Daidomon (Beach Road) but this place uses real charcoal whereas Dai uses electril grill (which i personally think is more efficient)

brought 2 business associates here and they really know the high-life (because of the price). Left all the meat ordering to them while i had a bowl of ramen. Ramen was bad...didn't give me the Japanese feel for some reason

meat taste good though...and the staff also assisted us with cooking the mushroom and asparagus wrapped in foil. The 2 guests also assisted with the meat cooking (you kidding, i'm paying for the meal, not expecting to lift a finger!!)

fell personally that meat should be cooked by a professional (aka chef) to our liking since we are paying...maybe it's some Jap culture (i may be wrong - but it's not fun) reminds me of cooking myself when the very intention of me going to a restaurant is just eating without sweating.

Seemed to have some Korean dishes as well...that's where the confusion came in...

overall unsure honestly...place was a little too dim for my liking. Not a good place to view contracts and read fine print.

doesn't matter...corporate card eases the pain

JWNY

my first time at writing a food review. and gyu kaku just made me have to write one.

i was there 2 weeks ago on a saturday. my first time there with my boyfriend and so, he made reservation for 2 at 630pm, i think? when we arrived and told them that we placed a reservation at 630, the person just promptly greeted my bf by his surname, without even going through the list. or probably we were first of the evening lot, thats why. eitherway.. it was nice.

we were apprehensive about going there for dinner because we had our last meal at 430pm! so we were basically still very full.. but boyfriend said we could always order ala cartes. so yepp.. when we were seated, running through the menu.. we were very much clueless on what to order and finally decided on one of the sets. and because we were not in for the idea to try the beef tongue, the friendly female server got it changed to pork i think? and our lamb was also changed to more beef. (they were very flexible, very good)

then the appetizers came.. kimchi and two different salads. and i must say.. they all tasted very good. esp the leafy one, with their special sauce. then our plate of meat came.. IMO, the serving looked small. and yea, the server came to tell us the what they were and even helped to cook my prawns. remember we were still very full? turns out.. the beef/ meat were so tasty.. we couldnt stop eating and grinning to ourselves. and yes, they have this special sweet/ salty sauce on the table, that went really well with the meat. in the midst of eating.. came the stone-rice. ive never been a fan of it. because ive always had awful experience with stone-rice. turns out.. theirs was tasty! there were bits of kimchi in it..

while bbq-ing, despite the crowd in the restaurant, the servers changed our grills like 5 times? i think they wanted to make sure we dont bbq on burnt grills. kudos to that! last came our desserts, i had my all time fave, greentea ice cream while my bf had the sesame one. both tasted pretty good. so yea, all in all.. it was a superb experience. thing is.. though we were first to arrive in the lot, there were like 3 families that finished their meals before us. hahaha. we're afterall, new to this! and yea. think i will go back only on special occasions, if not.. it'll burn a big hole in our pockets. geez! then again, it was full house even on a rainy saturday.