Eating Yaki Niku

Activity > Not area specific > Eating

"Yaki Niku" means "BBQ'd Meat" in English.  In America when we think of a BBQ we think of a backyard deck, a large BBQ, one guy cooking hotdogs and hamburgers while friends and or family sit around chatting. In Japan they have that style of BBQ too but they also have a very convenient restaurant style of BBQ called Yaki Niku.

There are Yaki Niku restaurants EVERYWHERE... it's one of the Japanese favorite types of foods.  There are some expensive Yaki Niku places but in general typical Yaki Niku restaurants are very reasonable, filling and tasty!  Most all of them have "Lunch Specials" where you can get a complete lunch for around 1,000 yen.  Lunch specials usually come with a plate of medium quality meat, a large bowl of rice and a small salad.

When you go to a Yaki Niku restaurant in Japan you will sit at a table with a mini BBQ grill in the middle of it.  After the waitress turns it on, you will be in charge of the heat level so if the grill starts to get too hot, either turn it down yourself or call the waitress over to do it for you.  There's no specific way or method for cooking stuff, just grab some meat off your plate and place it on the grill. Everyone is in charge of their own plate of meat so just go ahead and cook it however you like.  Every Yaki Niku restaurant also has a variety of sauces and seasoning's on the table so feel free to grab whatever you like, pour it into your dipping dish and use it when your grilled meat is ready to be eaten.  Be sure to use the tongs that come with the plates to place raw meat on the grill, once the meat is thoroughly cooked you can use your chopsticks to grab and eat it... just keep "raw" and "cooked" utensils separate. Also the meat will be quite hot when coming strait off the grill so be careful when putting it into your mouth.  Grab it off the grill, dunk it into some sauce/seasoning, blow on it a bit and chow down... followed by a scoop of rice.

Lunch specials make Yaki Niku joints a great place for an economical and tasty meal but when getting together with a group of friends, Yaki Niku at night is also very popular.  Yaki Niku goes great with a couple of Japanese beers or a Chuuhai and makes for a great real live social event. Night-time prices will be double or triple of Lunch Special prices so just be prepared for that.

You can find Yaki Niku restaurants literally everywhere in Japan,  look for a sign with these kanji "焼肉"  or "やきにく" or "やき肉". 95% of the Yaki Niku restaurants will have picture menus so you can just point to what you want and order a meal without Japanese no problem.  Don't forget that ice cold Japanese beer to go along with it!