Manpuku, Costa Mesa

It was a nice out, a Saturday. Around noon-ish. We all met up over at Dustinator's for Yakiniku, Japanese-style BBQ. The place I wanted to go to was closed during the day, it was dinner only. Yakiniku is sort of a dinner only type of thing but not for us! Dustin drove the Cowboy Cadillac and all 5 of us were on our way to Plan B (or was it Plan C?).


This was it, our back up plan: Manpuku in Costa Mesa, CA. I've never eaten here before, just seen it a bunch of times because Orange County's best ramen house is next door. . I've had ramen for lunch there dozens of times. Anyway, figured we'd try out Manpuku...Even The Hater was in town from San "Juan" Diego to discuss the finer things of Japanese & Korean BBQ. I asked, "what do you think NORTH Korean BBQ is like, dude?"
He replied, "it's like this. They all eat sticks on a grill. Sticks are eaten cold though, cause they don't even have anything to light a fire with."
The Yukaejang with udon noodles showed up and so did the meat! Bring the MEAT! We want MEAT! Can you imagine what the bill was gonna be like with five of us, starving fuckers? We ordered a total of 8 or 10 of their plates of meats and paid extra for "extra meat"!
I'm stupid. It suddenly becomes a feeding frenzy and good conversation takes over. I forgot to take pictures of COOKED meat again!
But it's ok, at least you can look at the left hand CantStayJose! Far as the meat goes, it was... alright. I mean, this place was pretty good... but I dont think I'll ever be going back. We weren't bummed, but we've all just had better BBQ before. We're spoiled.
The beer drinkers drank Asahi. I had water. I've never drank an entire beer in my whole life. I've had many cocktails, many bottles of sake in my life. Just no beer for me.
So what was the overall consensus? "Eeeeh, I dunno". At least we all got to hang out. Just that alone is always a good time. Even if we had to eat cold sticks.
The Nator had too much Asahi so ChopperDave-o-tron drove us back to the LB. Why is he smiling? Because after all those plates of meat, rice, veggies, kim chee, three huge yukaejang with udon and we were only charged a total of $120 including tip! We were undercharged and it's their god damn fault. The service was kinda weird too.
But we ain't complaining. Have a good Sunday!