I should've seen it coming. There were hints. Though the food was great, the restaurant was often deserted. Bari Bari BBQ, the mom-and-pop yakiniku that opened barely four months ago in Tustin after a long delay, has gone up in smoke. It is now replaced by one of the giants of yakiniku, Gyu-Kaku, which boasts something on the order of 800 restaurants in Japan and eight in California, including one in Huntington Beach.
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This Tustin branch will be the ninth in California. The switchover is happening as we speak, and details are still sketchy. But methinks there's really not a lot of work to be done to the place, and the food will be almost identical.
What will be interesting is whether they will replace the grills. Bari Bari used a solid-metal cooking surface, while Gyu-Kaku's signature yakiniku grills feature metal-wire lattice grates.
Will the instant name recognition of Gyu-Kaku overcome the awkwardness of the location? We'll see.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.