Sunday, June 21, 2009

I Always Get Robbed When It's All-You-Can-Eat

Ok, so everyone is recovering from yesterday's Regional and some of us are recovering from a long week at KDE, so no one was really up and going too early today.

Eventually everyone was awake (except Jerome who had apparently gone back to sleep) and consensus was reached "Let's go get some lunch." The only common ground we could find was "ramen sounds OK" - but Ajisen was way too far, SSG was too far, Mitsuwa was kind of far, Ryo wasn't open yet, and I'm not a huge fan of the other place in Rolling Hills that starts with an "s" (forgot the name).  

Remembering there was a place we hadn't tried; Frank, Jason and I headed to a different shopping complex. They didn't have shio or tonkotsu, though - just shoyu and miso.  Tonkotsu is everyone's #1 favorite (I like shio too) so it wasn't terribly appealing.

However, there was a yakinuku place a few doors down so we took a look at their menu, and decided to give it a try. (Hey, it passed the "do they have free refills on drinks?" test...)

I start flipping through the menu and figure I'm going to eat about $15 worth of food. However, there are some all-you-can-eat options as well - which made much more financial sense for my dining companions, because they can freaking eat a lot. Anyways, the restaurant won't let you order an "all you can eat" option unless EVERYONE at the table orders it, so I either had to go ahead and get an all you can eat that was SO not going to be worth it, because I don't eat very much, or oblige Frank and Jason to order a la carte and a) spend a lot more money, or b) not get enough to eat.

So I agreed to do the all-you-can-eat, because I'm a hero like that. And admittedly I got a lot more food options than I would have if I'd ordered individual items, but still.

The food was really really good - salad with a nice dressing, and I got sweet potato in foil (butter, salt, and pepper, mmm) and then the meats were short ribs (excellent), chicken breast, a finer cut of beef, and pork belly. All pretty good, and I think I ate 1-2 pieces of each kind and then I was full.

Then I sat and watched Frank and Jason demolish about five refills of meat, more rice, and more soda.  They certainly got their money's worth, I'll say that much...but the bill for me was pretty steep considering I didn't really eat all that much. Jason gave me $10 though because it was kind of an unfair setup, so that helped a bit.

Good restaurant, though, I'll recommend it - Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ on Crenshaw Blvd, in Torrance.

1 comment:

  1. Oh man that place was good. @_@ We should really just codify the "smaller people get monetary compensation" system and eat there more often. That sweet potato was divine, and the salad was so awesome. I love finding foods I no longer have to go to Tokyo to get.

    Hey, you started blogging again! Hooray!

    -Jason

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