Japan is the country that I have long been setting my sights on, even up to this day. Time will come that I will conquer it, but in the meantime, I take delight with the Japanese food found in our vicinity in Bacolod City. One such place is Yakiniku Room, found inside L’Fisher Hotel’s Ripples Restaurant.

For only Php599 per person, you get to enjoy all the meat you can eat, along with rice, kimchi and miso soup, excluding drinks. And as the name suggests, you will grill the meat yourself — beef (from beef tender to Wagyu), pork, and chicken — including vegetables and satisfy your meat cravings with this eat-all-you-can offering. Sauces will also provided where you can opt to dip your grilled meat on them or have them without sauce.

Have your soup, kimchi and choice of sauce.

What’s nice about Yakiniku Room is that you can have it all to yourself. The small size is ideal for meetings, family gatherings, and small celebrations. The room is open from 11:00AM to 2:00PM for lunch and 6:00PM to 10:00PM for dinner. One side of the glass wall has a wonderful view of the hotel’s small pool while a portion on the other side has a wallpaper that makes you feel like you’re grilling outdoors.

Cocktail or mocktail? I went for the latter.

While I prefer to cook my meat slow on low or medium fire to avoid burning my food, I read through some techniques on grilling meat and enjoying my yakiniku at its best. I found out that in Japan, they advise diners to cook their meat quickly on strong heat. Just don’t leave your meat too long though, to achieve the right result. Just put one or two slices at a time and don’t flip the meat on the fire every now and then… Ooops, it seemed we did the exact opposite.

Pork slices.

Chicken slices.

Mixed vegetables.

Yakiniku experts also suggest to cook first meat that has lesser strong taste towards the one with a stronger flavor. Be sure to know your meat. Also thinner slices will only take a few seconds on fire while thicker ones will probably last a minute or more.

It’s time to grill!

Are we doing it right?

Seems like we’re doing it the wrong way: slow heat and plenty of meat there. Still, we enjoyed our meal and had our fill.

It seems that L’Fisher Hotel’s Yakiniku Room is a good place to practice my yakiniku skills before I would embark on a trip to Japan. Since there’s no definite time when that will actually happen, it would seem that there’s still plenty of time to hone my knowledge on yakiniku.