The NYC entry is a spacious, stylish venue of lacquered, high-gloss, black wooden booths, white brick walls, high industrial ceilings, hanging lights, an open kitchen, and a candle-lined bar. The black-garbed staff prowls the shiny, modern premises helping diners use the table grills that hold sizzling-hot charcoal fires.Even before the shrimp, vegetables, fish, and beef arrive for barbecuing, the signs are positive. The soup isn’t the often-encountered drab, uninteresting miso, but a rich, vibrantly seasoned gyoza brew containing a husky pork dumpling. The Gyu-Kaku salad isn’t the usual boring iceberg lettuce, ginger-dressing affair, but a mélange of soft greens with a tasty Russian dressing. Other non-meat dishes sampled were ahi poke, a Hawaiian appetizer specialty of marinated raw tuna balls in a soy sauce perched on a bed of seaweed (think tuna tartare) and bibimba. The latter is rice-laced with tiny bits of chicken, egg, and seasoned vegetables presented in a red-hot stone pot that a touch of its accompanying spicy sauce perfected. No add-ons were needed with the pungent kimchee, an almost-incendiary Korean amalgam of fermented cabbages.
But the main event at Gyu-Kaku is the yakiniku, which means, “grilling meats.” Chicken, duck, lamb, lobster, fish, tongue, liver, tripe, sausage, scallops, vegetables, and kobe skirt and rib-eye steak are available. The prime, thin-cut ingredients are placed on the scorching grill and cooked within minutes or even seconds. The high quality of the meat, their very quick charbroiling, and the addition of imaginative marinades lock in the juicy, natural flavor.
Savvy diners order three or four of the 3- or 4-ounce portions and then sample them family-style. Although many vegetables and the sea bass arrive in ready-to-cook foil packets, most ingredients are placed directly on the grill. Among the recommended entrées are all the steaks, the garlic shrimp, and the Chilean sea bass. S’mores and Dorayaki ice cream with Japanese pancakes are appropriate finales.
If the daunting, twelve-page menu is too much to wrestle with, consider the three multi-course, fixed-price, no-decision-needed meals for two or four diners. 34 Cooper Square (Third Ave. btw. 5th & 6th Sts.), 212-475-2989; 805 Third Ave. at 50th St., 2nd flr., 212-702-8816; www.gyu-kaku.com
Richard Jay Scholem was a restaurant critic for the New York Times' Long Island section for 14 years. His A La Carte column appeared from 1990 to 2004. For more “Taste of the Town” reviews, click here.
