I know most of you have had Korean Barbeque before, but what about Japanese BBQ? Thankfully, there is a restaurant inside the Topanga Mall that will put all your wonderings to rest: Gyu-Kaku (pronounced GEE-YOO-KA-KU, I think).
This is not your usual mall food. With the aura of a high scale restaurant, each table has a grill for customers to barbeque their meat and vegetables themselves. What is unique about the food, essentially what makes it Japanese is the different marinades of the meat. They have traditional sauces of miso, white soy, sweet soy, and garlic.
The restaurant opened in 2007 on the first floor of the mall near Target. Although Gyu-Kaku has only been in the states for six years with 8 restaurants in California, 2 in New York, and 2 in Hawaii, it has long been a franchise in Japan with about 800 restaurants.
Gyu-Kaku offers meat and vegetables a la carte, in different all- you-can eat sets (the more expensive the set, the more variety of food you can choice from), and from set courses that have a recommended amount of mouths it can feed. Last time I went, we ordered the Shogun set which recommended to feed six people, but in actuality the eight of us ate to our fill with this order. Here is what the set came with:
The Spicy Chigae Soup is pretty salty so I’d recommend eat it with rice (they have this garlic rice that is really tasty and flavorful), and it is quite remincent of kimchi soup so it really warms you up.
Spicy Chigae Soup
The Sukiyaki Bibimba is a type of fried rice in a stone bowl mixed with beef and an egg (similiar to Korean Bibimbap). For the meat, each one has its own unique flavors that sets it apart from any other Asian BBQ, and everything smelled deliciously like butter. We also ordered garlic mushrooms a la carte, which came wrapped in aluminum foil and we just placed it on top of the grill for 2 minutes of each side and it is seriously the most tender and juicy mushrooms ever. Another time I came here, we ordered the all-you-can eat BBQ and we ordered about 8 of these garlic mushrooms. It was that good.
Last peice of meat
I was so busy eating that I forget to take pictures, but here is a shot of the very last peice of beef before we cleared it out. It’s always fun to gather around the grill with family or friends because it’s so much more hands-on than other more traditional restaurants. There’s just something about the combination of cooking your own food and laughter and good conversations just fits perfectly together. Just remember to dress appropriately because I guarantee you that you will smell like barbeque afterwards.
They also have a special promotions that kids eat free on Sundays with the purchase of an all-you-can eat set. Also on Sundays from 5 pm-9 pm, they have all night happy hour where drinks are 50% off, and beer is $.99!
Rating: 8.7 (the mushrooms adds the .7!)
Address: Topanga Mall 6600 Topanga Cyn Blvd, Canoga Park
