Gyukaku, BBQ on a Hot Autumn

Last autumn, I met up with a friend to go on the most expensive lunch we ever had. Gyukaku is a Japanese styled barbeque restaurant. Each table has a grill and you cook your own food. A couple of reviews I read beforehand didn't like having to cook their own food because they were looking more of a restaurant that would serve food. Gyukaku offers an experience of barbequing indoors which is what I was looking forward to. I really liked this place and if I had enough money again, I would go again.
 It is a costly place to eat at. My friend and I went for a lunch set for two people and ordered a bit more side orders. We each paid roughly $40 so that would make $80 an entire meal. To be more detailed, the lunch set included a Gyukaku salad, a miso based soup, vegetable plate containing corn, tomato, red pepper, mushroom, onion, and zucchini, small plates of beef chuck, bistro hanger steak, and kalbi chuck, and marinated chicken. For side orders we ordered one plate of wagyu, calamari, and a seaweed salad. The dessert that came with the set was S'mores and all beverages excluding alcoholic drinks were $3. You can keep getting them refilled as well. Looking at the small plates, my friend and I were convinced at first it wasn't enough but we did leave the restaurant well fed.

The service at Gyukaku's in East Village is extremely good. The staff made sure you knew how to operate the grill and cleaned your grill frequently. They are extremely friendly and check up on you to see if everything's going all right. Their bathrooms are clean and very chic in design. The interior design of the entire restaurant was very nice. At first upon walking in, I was put off by the dim lights because I do not find dim lights attractive. But once I was seated I realized that each table was well lit by a hanging light. I can tell how my food is being cooked and I can see my friend's face across the table. Dim atmosphere in general really puts me off, but this wasn't dim.

Let's get to the food. Portions are small and that's expected in the city for such expensive prices. I was not interested in the vegetables and I do not enjoy grilled vegetables that much in the first place. What I didn't like was the marinated chicken. It was white meat and it didn't have a good texture to it like the wagyu beef slices did. Wagyu is like heaven to meta lovers because the marbled fat has so much flavor and it's so easy to eat. If I remember correctly the beef chuck wasn't my favorite as well due to the texture. The rest of the meal was great though. The Gyukaku salad was a bit of an eye opener for me because I never had raw spinach before. It contained spinach, cucumber, tomato, shredded daikon, and I think some lettuce as well. The dressing to me was incredible because it was so simple. It tasted like it had miso paste and some mustard. The flavors worked really well and the texture of raw baby spinach is just ... wow. We ordered a ginger ale together to quench our thirst on such a hot autumn day. It was October and it was in the blazing 80s. I got friggin sunburned that day.