Heat of the Moment

Butterflied shrimp on our tabletop grill turn opaque white, curling at the edges. Wielding chopsticks, my 10-year-old friend Mia reaches out and flips the shrimp, plucking each off onto our plates just as the edges brown. A succulent bite or two and they’re gone. Marinated bone-in kalbi, or short ribs, hit the grill next. Then come chewy slices of harami, or skirt steak, and more tender ro’su, or rib-eye. In between, we throw on thumb-sized green shishito peppers, which turn out to be hotter than they look.

We’re seated in the tatami room at the back of Gyu-kaku, a new restaurant in West Los Angeles specializing in Japanese-style Korean barbecue. More diners are crammed into the booths across the aisle, and up front, groups of two or three grill their food at small tables or charcoal grills inset into the counter in front of the open kitchen. The staff rushes about in black T-shirts with the Gyu-kaku logo. Cool jazz--Mulligan and Monk--plays on the sound system.

Mia, who is usually shy, revels in her self-appointed role as cook to six adults, doling out morsels of beef or chicken like a mother bird feeding her young ones. It’s all so fresh; we eat and eat, stopping only to blow on each bite to cool it. The beef is subtly sweet or tangy from its marinade. When you order beef, you get your choice of three marinades--the traditional ta’re; the restaurant’s sauce called shio, which is sesame oil, white soy sauce and garlic; or a sweet, pungent miso sauce. It’s easy to get them mixed up. Which beef is which? And which one had the shio or ta’re sauce? It doesn’t matter, really, because they’re all pretty good, and it’s fun guessing. Though you occasionally can get a tough piece of skirt steak, the flavor is still full-tilt beef. I even got a couple of recalcitrant eaters at my table to admit that the thin squares of grilled liver and tongue were edible.

Another way to eat the grilled seafood and meats is to wrap each bite-sized piece in a ruffled lettuce leaf with a dab of spicy bean paste and a pinch of chopped scallions. (These garnishes need to be ordered separately.) Kimchi, Korea’s garlicky and fiery pickled vegetables, is obligatory, too. There’s the familiar soft, wrinkly nappa cabbage version, along with crunchy squares of daikon radish and, my favorite, the small cucumbers cut in the shape of flowers. You can order them separately or as part of the assorted kimchi.

So far, I’ve eaten just about everything on the menu and encountered only one seriously pedestrian item. The sloppy, overdressed seaweed salad, sad to say, is not Gyu-kaku’s best moment. Everything else is pretty much right on the mark. Calamari come four or five pieces to a foil bag. “Grill them three minutes. Three,” instructs our waiter, holding up three fingers. It took somewhat longer to heat through to the center, but no matter. Maybe our fire wasn’t up to speed. Still, they’re very tender, steamed in the soy and broth in the packet.

Gyu-kaku’s fare is fast food, the first U.S. outpost of a chain that encompasses more than 300 locations in Japan, second only to--you guessed it--McDonald’s. But what a world of difference.

I can see immediately why Gyu-kaku is so popular in Japan. It’s fun. It’s cheap. It’s hip. And the food is fresh and appealing. The West L.A. restaurant takes reservations for up until 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturdays, and until 7 p.m. Sundays; after that, you’re on your own. Outside, there’s always a long line of hipsters--with spiky hair, baggy pants and the latest techno sneakers--speaking Japanese or Korean.

Even though we have reservations, there we are on Pico Boulevard, within shouting distance of La Serenata Gourmet and the Westside Pavilion, hanging out like teenagers, waiting for our table. The place is swamped, but the wait staff couldn’t be more engaging or understanding. So much so that we ask a server where she worked before. “Nowhere!” she tells us cheerfully. It turns out she’s a premed student at UCLA and this is her first job as a waitress. Most of the other waiters here are college students, too, smart and unflappable.

The full name of the restaurant is Gyu-kaku yakiniku dining. Yakiniku entails grilling meats over charcoal--an urban Japanese take on traditional Korean barbecue. Originally, yakiniku restaurants were dark, smoky working-class dives, until someone had the bright idea to give them a hip, contemporary decor and soundtrack. It was the birth of a trend in Japan.

The contractors at Gyu-kaku must have modeled the handful of booths on the Japanese restaurants because space is tight. Even a 10-year-old kid has trouble squeezing between the tabletop and the seat. The tatami room (which seats six--eight in a pinch) is much more comfortable, but the server still had to take off her shoes and walk along the bench behind us in order to change the grill. “It’s my job!” she apologized, laughing good-naturedly.

Back to the food. One dish absolutely not to miss is bibimba--rice, kimchi and a mix of greens cooked in a sizzling stone pot. At the table, the server mixes in raw egg and hot-pepper paste to taste. The stone pot makes a wonderful, chewy crust of rice. Sometimes there’s a special seafood version that features scallops, calamari and shrimp. And if you’re really missing your pasta, order the kimchi ramen, a big bowl of fresh egg noodles mixed with vegetables and a blast of hot pepper.

At Gyu-kaku, you can barbecue your dessert, too. The bowl of yakimochi ice cream comes with four or five pieces of mochi (pounded sticky rice) about half the size of a stick of chewing gum. The idea is to throw them on the barbie and wait until they bubble and char at the edges, like marshmallows over the campfire, and then enjoy them on your bowl of green-tea ice cream.

You can eat and eat at Gyu-kaku, and yet seldom spend more than $20 per person, excluding drinks, tax and tip. “You guys didn’t eat that much,” admonishes our waitress. “My girlfriend and I ran up a $150 bill for just the two of us! Well, some of that was alcohol.” She’s referring to shochu, a sweet potato spirit. Bring it on, we say. She squeezes fresh orange juice into a tall glass filled with ice and the clear alcohol. It is as smooth as water. Dangerous stuff in the heat of the moment--and the grill. But what fun.

Gyu-kaku

10925 W. Pico Blvd.

West Los Angeles

(310) 234-8641

Cuisine: Japanese-style Korean barbecue

Rating: **

AMBIENCE: Lively do-it-yourself Korean barbecue restaurant with cramped booths, small tables and a counter where you can grill, too.

SERVICE: Pleasant and unflappable.

BEST DISHES: Bone-in kalbi, rib-eye, shrimp, chicken with basil, shishito peppers, assorted kimchi, bibimba in hot stone pot, yakimochi ice cream. Appetizers and salads, $1 to $5. Small plates of items to grill, $5 to $8. No corkage fee.

DRINK PICKS: Shochu and orange juice.

FACTS: Dinner daily. Parking on street and at the Westside Pavilion.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.