From the land of capsule hotels, one-person karaoke booths and solo-only bars comes Yakiniku Like: a quick-service grilled meat restaurant made with the lone diner in mind. The concept is a hit and it has grown into a giant with 30 outlets spread across Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia since its opening the first store in Tokyo in August 2018. Today, it officially opened its 31st outlet in Singapore. The chain is the product of Dining Innovation Group, which has 11 brands and 260 restaurants world-wide under its wing. This includes Sumire Yakitori House, Kintan Buffet and shabu-shabu restaurant Shaburi, which were brought to Singapore since the group’s foray into the local market in 2013. The restaurant’s representative says that they wish to focus on this first Yakiniku Like outlet in Singapore and have no plans for opening any other outlets within the next year.

The outlet sits near Tokyu Hands at basement 1 of Paya Lebar Quarter mall. Unlike most concepts designed for solo consumers — which tend to be dimly lit perhaps for privacy, and a little eerily quiet (with the exception of karaoke booths, of course) — Yakiniku Like is positively pumping. The signage at the entrance screams its cheery motto: “Tasty! Quick! Value!” in neon lights, and the 42-seater is lit bright as day. The space is decked out in honey-hued wood finishing and accented with white subway tiles and grey wallpaper. It’s so decidedly hip and happy that it’s not possible to feel like you are in the MTV of Radiohead’s Creep walking in by yourself.

The 16 solo dining seats are positioned in two rows of eight on both sides of an island right smack in the middle of the restaurant. Sorry, no slinking into a corner here. The tables at the periphery (pictured) are all for parties of two or more. Yup, if solo-pride is a thing, Yakiniku Like will be the biggest champion of it. Each seat comes with its own niche purpose-built for slotting your tray of food in, a drawer filled with utensils and wet wipes and your personal grill. But sorry, the condiment racks mounted on a partition in the middle of the island are to be shared with the diner beside you.

You get to steal glances at other solo diners through the gaps in the partition (see above). Awkward or exciting? Depends on how cute your neighbour is. But note that this also means that the person on the opposite side of the counter can also see you.

To order, scan the QR code behind the menu placed at your seat. This brings you to an ordering page and once your selection is made and sent through, the food is supposed to arrive at your table in three minutes. We say “supposed to”, because our three orders came in five minutes during the media preview. But that’s still faster than at some fast food joints, lah.

Yakiniku Like offers eight set meals, starting from $7.80 for a 100g pork-and-chicken set and goes up to $29.80 for a 200g wagyu steak set. Each comes with miso soup, rice and your choice of kimchi or salad. There are also value for money sets with beef short plate slivers, which comes with the option of 100g, 200g and 300g of meat ($8.80, $12.80 and $16.80 respectively). If you are feeling particularly carnivorous, individual portions of the different meats can also be ordered via the a la carte menu, ranging from $2.90 for 50g of karubi to $27.80 for 200g of wagyu steak. You can also decide whether you want a small, medium or large portion of rice (150g, 200g and 300g respectively) to go with your set meal. And good news for those of you who love short-grain rice: the price is the same regardless of the amount of rice you order. No refills here, though.

Once you’ve placed your order, turn your personal grill on through the control buttons at your table. The controls are pretty idiot-proof, so you shouldn’t have to ask for help, or look like a complete loser trying to operate it. We turned the heat up to maximum (level 5) and it took about three minutes for it to heat up — which means it should be ready when your food arrives. However, note that the area that gets heated up is slightly smaller than the grilling space: the heating elements end short of the length of the grill, and a metal plate covers the other end of the rods. This means that slivers placed on the left and right ends of the grill will cook a lot slower than those in the middle. Our recommendation is to let the grill heat up at the highest level for about five minutes, then turn it down to level 3, so that the slivers placed around the grill can cook more evenly. Or you can limit yourself to cooking just two to three slivers of meat at a time in the centre of the grill.

Yakiniku Like claims to be Singapore’s first restaurant to offer individual electric smokeless grills. This is made possible by a system that draws the smoke downwards through suction. The grills used here are made in Taiwan, same as Yakiniku Like outlets in Taiwan. The ones used in the Japanese and Indonesian outlets are made by the same manufacturer, but in their Japanese facilities. We were slightly sceptical about the efficacy of this smoke-less system but boy does it work. For once, we didn’t feel the need to wash our hair out three times after a meal of grilled meats. And our clothes actually smell as fresh as if we had come out from a salad bar. So yes, you can safely have a meal here all by yourself at lunch break and not return to the office with people making snarky remarks like, “Wah, ownself go and eat barbecue ah?”.

With the exception of the Australian Wagyu, the beef served here is all from US. (And from atas supplier Indoguna, if you really must know.) The meats are not pre-marinated but given a drizzle of the signature Like Original BBQ Sauce — a sweetish soy-based blend — just before serving, so you don’t really have to season the meats any further. If you must, there are four different sauces, and for the Singapore outlet only: chilli sauce (the syrupy type that you get at fast-food stores), and sliced chilli padi. However, we found all the sauces a bit too sweet, which masked the umami of the meats. What we recommend: throw on some salt during grilling to draw out more of the meaty flavours, and finishing your meats with a crack of pepper. Trust us on this: our photographer who used to cook at Meat Smith restaurant concurs.

This set features slivers of US beef short plate, pork jowl (also from the US) and little chunks of chicken thigh (from Brazil). It’s a pretty good portion of meats for the price, and unless you are so atas that you only eat never-frozen meats, the selection is decent in terms of both flavour and mouthfeel: fresh, flavourful and moist. The only issue we had was the little nuggets of chicken thigh were slightly more troublesome to cook thoroughly, unlike the slivers, which only require flipping once.

A set meal comprising beef tongue, skirt steak and beef short plate. While almost every set on the menu featured the popular karubi (beef short plate), it was the skirt steak (pictured) that won us over. Compared to the paper-thin karubi slices, this boasted a much better bite and a more robust flavour. The beef tongue — also sliced super thin — were also a treat with its springy texture and a flavour that wasn’t too gamey.

Ok this isn’t quite Mortons quality, but it's still a tasty steak with a good degree of marbling that made it tender, moist, yet not so fatty that you cannot taste its beefiness. At $17.80 for 120g, it’s almost as cheap as buying a slab of Aussie wagyu from the supermarket to cook at home. Except here, the 1-cm-thick steaks are served to you nicely cut into strips, and you don’t even have to clean up (and spray air freshener all over the house after cooking). Move over, Astons.

If you’re painfully embarrassed about eating alone, know that Yakiniku Like is not like Ichiran Ramen, where you get to hide in a booth and stuff your face like an animal. That said, the set-up is designed for solo diners — from the individually portioned sets to the modestly sized grills. This means that anybody can have a grilled meat feast from just $7.80 (or a reasonable $27.80 for wagyu) without having to round up an army of friends. The high-tech smokeless grill is a bit of a double-edged sword. You leave with clean-smelling hair, but if you love the aroma of grilled meats, then there really isn’t even the slightest whiff of it here unless you stick your face to the grill and inhale furiously. We also kinda wish the menu had some non-meat items. A coupla grilled green peppers would’ve been a nice complement to all that meat and slightly too-sweet sauces. However, we still had a satisfying, affordable meal here — we’d happily pop by again if it weren’t crowded. But we wouldn’t queue longer than 10 minutes for a seat — on opening day today, Feb 3, the line for the $2.90 Karubi Promo (U.P. $12.80) attracted lines of approximately one to two hours-long. ​​​​​​​

Yakiniku Like is at #B1-28 Paya Lebar Quarter, 10 Paya Lebar Rd, S409057, Tel: 6970-7397 (no reservations allowed). Open daily 11am-10pm, last orders at 9.30pm. yakiniku-like.com​​​​​​​

Photos: Alvin Teo & Yakiniku Like