Gaku Restaurant - San Jose, California

Junhua Chen

Gaku Restaurant offers a delightful dining experience with its fresh, high-quality food and excellent service. Each dish is carefully prepared, allowing you to truly savor the flavors. The portions are on the smaller side, which is a positive as it allows you to taste and enjoy a variety of dishes. The atmosphere is cozy, making it a great spot for a relaxed meal. If you're looking for a place with consistently good food and attentive service, Gaku is definitely worth a visit. Just be prepared to order a few more dishes to satisfy your appetite!

Timmy Hsueh

慕名而來這家日本居酒屋，氣氛很好但價格很貴，這次點了串燒跟一碗蛤蜊清湯，有些串燒太鹹，鹹到沒辦法感受到食物本身的味道，不過蛤蜊湯很好喝，或許下次會再來試試其他的品項。

Wanting Jiang

Really really good skewer. So close to what we’ve had in Japan. Love the salt flavor. It really tries to bring out the true flavor of food! They must but very confident in their the quality of their ingredients. Charcoal is also the key!! I highly recommend the wings and thigh skewer, the beef tongue, and the shrimp karaage. 😍

Eve Lim

Came here for dinner as I had wanted to try out their charcoal grilled dishes. Ordered beef skewers from the yakitori menu, grilled Barracuda fish from the Specials, and grilled squid and grilled onigiri with uni from the regular menu. Everything tasted good and uni was fresh but the fish did have quite a lot of bones. Ended the meal with a yuzu and honey cheesecake but it tasted and had the consistency more like that of a custard pudding. The service was good and the staff were very nice and friendly. They have extended their operating hours to 11pm daily. 1st time here but wouldn’t mind returning.

Sida

Probably the best Japanese BBQ I had in the bay so far, although not inexpensive. The lighting is good for photography.

Recommend the skewers, uni with jelly and egg rice. Fish liver is too dry and I don’t recommend it.

Alyssa Siddiqui

Gaku is one of those hole in the wall Japanese restaurants that you frequent because you can’t get traditional Japanese dishes like takowasa, ika sugatayaki, yakitori, or ankimo anywhere else.

Extremely late post with pictures of food that I’ve eaten at Gaku over the seasons.

Highly recommend if you want traditional Japanese food with the atmosphere.

Jaime Felix

My cousin from San Jose recommended this to me and I'm glad I tried it out because yakitori is one of my favorite foods.

The flavors, vibes and dim lighting at Gaku Yakitori take me back a visit to Tokyo. I've been twice to Gaku in two weeks and can't wait to come back for more. For my first visit, they ran out of a lot of items, so it shows how popular they are and how loyal their customers are. During dinner, the place was packed and I could here people speaking Japanese, so I could tell it's an authentic spot.

My favorites were the chicken thigh and wing skewers of course, but everything hit the spot. They nailed the flavors here-- good quality meats, sauces, and everything was grilled to perfection. The appetizers were also tasty. Everything tasted great with the draft Asahi and brown rice tea.

I do recommend a mix of appetizers and skewers here. Japanese people eat tomatoes and edamame with beer, so I recommend those two. Shrimp karaage, gaku spicy wings, chicken wings, chicken thigh, bacon steak, meatballs, butabara, and king oyster mushroom are great. The desserts are also good. When I went there was a special dorayaki with red bean and whip cream that we had to try. The green tea creme brulee was another tasty way to finish dinner.

Judy L

The yakitori here is amazing - we ordered beef, chicken meat ball and chicken wings, they all tasted so good. Especially the beef, so tender, fresh and flavorful. We also had rice and salad, they also had great quality. The sauce for the rice was very yummy. It’s a bit pricy but I think worth it! Highly recommend!