Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ in San Mateo

The restaurant was very crowded. We went there for lunch. We ordered the combo for 2 because they have large menu, but the amount of food isn’t worth the price. Staff was attentive but not what you would describe as friendly.

Great Japanese BBQ restaurant. Food is always fresh and consistent. Service is quick. Love the atmosphere too, everybody working is so upbeat and nice. Try to come during their happy hour, good deal and less crowded. Great value all around, always fun experience and our go-to place for family gathering.

Busy location. Made appointment, and got seated very fast after arrival. The hosts(or the manger) seems very motivated and passionate about the job so he made the whole experience more enjoyable to the customers. The server seems a little bit burnt out and frustrated but she still offered standard service. On the food side, I really like their combo, it’s perfect and convenient for people who don’t know what to order since they have relatively big menu.Update: it’s not hygienic to put tongs on table. Service was not as attentive as it used to be.

We got the happy hour set and the total bill not including tips was about $95. For the amount of food we got, it was definitely not worth the price. It was tasty and the DIY cooking factor helped us slow down with eating and we were surprisingly full at the end. It was hard to flag down servers to change our grill or turn down the heat so there was quite a bit of burnt bits on our meat so a lot of that wasnt edible. Out of all the meats, the pesto chicken was as dry as a leather bag. I am glad to try out this place but most likely not returning.

Props to the staff who was very kind and helpful to our group. We informed her we are new to this resto so we asked for her suggestions, the menu and quantity of our orders. She was attentive to our group, gave tips on how to grill to perfection and made sure we were enjoying the moment which we did. Thank you for the wonderful dining experience ❤️

This location seems a bit run down. Place was dirty and felt sticky. We arrived when they opened on a Monday night. There were still many open tables.Hostess was awesome but our server was average. She wasn’t familiar with the Company food offerings. There were no rib fingers or pork jowl on the menu. No AYCE at this location, they do have Happy Hour.We observed another server that was carrying a hot sizzling bowl and backed into a mother holding a baby who was just leaving the restroom. The server not only did not apologize but looked disgruntled before going on her way. There are way better locations in the bay area. I’m not sure we will return at this one any time soon.

Meat quality is pretty bad, and the grill is not hot enough even tho it was on high settings. Low quality rice as well, tastes like reheated rice from leftover.

Overall good experience, only thing bad was the service. Had to order things more than once on pretty much everything we ordered. We also got stuff we didn’t order but we just ate it anyways because most of it was pretty tasty. The meat cuts were good and not stingy. Other bbqs like this are usually stingy with the meat. Not this place. Good decent sized cuts. It might be small portion but it’s unlimited, who cares. I felt like most of the options for the basic tier unlimited should be removed because they aren’t good. Like the seaweed salad. Not good or not fresh or something. Need to add kimchi in basic tier.

The place was understaffed, but they had signage to remind people that there would be delays in service. My party sat at the booth and we were not expecting to wait 15 minutes to get water. Im not sure if the push button was working, because no one ever showed up when we pushed it. We had to manually flag servers to come. To their credit, whenever we flagged someone down, they would help us out quickly or get someone who was assigned to our area to assist us.When our orders were taken, I think the food came out at a fairly acceptable pace. We were not waiting long between trays being served.I wish this was all you can eat. There arent many Gyu Kakus that are all you can eat (if they still offer it). The portions for the set meals will leave you feeling content and not like youve over eaten. The quality of the meat is always good. Most items are marinated so I dont use the side sauces.

Its very hard to get a parking slot on Saturday so we went here for dinner at 5:30pm. They have Happy Hour until 6pm so we got a combo for slightly lower price and ordered a few more a la carte items also at a discount. Food was very good.